paper decorations #3 vintage decorations with a family history

from my childhood and beyond. crepe paper sewn with a gather, pull out from centre and a beautiful twist of paper garland. roll on right hand side, with tail, two colour
(the strip is half one & half another fading through different colours...) and made by my grandmother before I was born - 1950's. the rest were made by my mother when I was a baby  - early 60's and by my brother when we were early teens - mid to late 70's and replacements needed!

some old stuff & thrifty stuff in THIS SET OF IMAGES amongst the more new stuff

including:

Making: recycling, upcycling, thrift

as requested...how I made the paper decorations in the previous post...



1 sheet from Country Living, a pair of scissors, a stapler and some glue [UHU is my favourite].
Cut the sheet into three. Three different widths make three different sizes.



Concertina fold the strips. Sometimes a there's a little bit too much, just trim it off. It's better if it is all like a series of Ms that is start and finish down [well or both up like W]

Then fold each concertina neatly in half. Firmly staple along the crease - sometimes it doesn't go right through, I just turn it over and go in from the other side.













Then you glue the two bits together to make a half moon, then open out and stick the other sides together...
Then you might want to stick shiny things, buttons or glitter into the middle - even a little disc of coloured paper.

Now if you want to make a long hanging you need to join them up. You can either make a little stitch into mddle of one and tie a knot and join to the next, then repeat...then thread a loop through to hang it or you can take one thread through - it's quite fiddly getting it through the middle.

paper: recycling, upcycling, thrift

some dangling fans - medallions - discs - flowers. They needn't just be for Christmas...
take one page of a magazine, preferably with good all over colour both sides [can be different colours on each side]. Cut three stripes vertically - if you make them different widths you get different sizes...  Concertina them up - if a bit left over at end trim off. Fold carefully in half and get a good crease. Staple arcos this centre crease. You will need to give a good push with stapler on a solid surface! Fan out each side [one at a time] and stick together. I had some little plastic gems and stuck them into the centre. You could use a disc of coloured paper, or nothing.
Then I sew through them [it it is a hard push through the centre of the central disc]. I use a new thread at the top to hang them up.



a look at both sides





HOW TOO blog entry