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Garlands look beautiful all year round, but are especially good for the holidays - New Year, Easter, Birthday or Halloween. You can decorate the walls, ceiling or windows of any room with a garland - from the kitchen to the children's room, as well as a Christmas tree or mantelpiece. In this material we will tell you 10 ideas with step-by-step master classes on how to make a garland with your own hands from scrap, natural and even waste materials.
New Year's garland of voluminous snowflakes
We present the first idea for making a garland for the New Year with your own hands - from snowflakes. We probably all remember how to cut a flat snowflake from a square sheet of paper. This method will help you out if you need to make a garland in the shortest possible time. However, if you want to make a more elegant decoration, we suggest assembling it from voluminous snowflakes. They take a little longer and are more complicated to make, but the resulting garland will survive more than one holiday.
Instructions:
Prepare paper, such as regular office paper, a pencil, scissors, a stapler, glue or double-sided tape, and thread.
- Divide a sheet of A4 paper into two equal strips.
- Now assemble each strip into an accordion. This can be done in the following way: fold the strip in half, then fold the half in half again, then also fold the quarter in half and continue until the entire strip has folds. Next, focusing on the fold lines, assemble the accordion.
- Cut one small strip from your accordion, cut it in half, and then draw a template on it that you will use to cut out the snowflake patterns. The template is drawn arbitrarily, but so that the edges of the assembled accordion remain uncut in two or three places. An example of the template can be seen in the top right photo.
- Bend the accordion in half and fasten it in the middle with a stapler.
- Use a pencil to trace the outline of the template on one of the halves of your workpiece, and then use scissors to cut off the corresponding parts of the design.
- Repeat Step #5 with the other half of the piece, using the same template.
- Fan out each half of your piece and glue their ends together.
- Hang snowflake medallions on a beautiful thread, such as silver.
"Sweet" craft
Another effective way to decorate is beautiful tinsel made from candy wrappers, especially if you have a sweet tooth in your family. Nowadays, it has still not lost its relevance, adding a touch of individuality to the decor.
For such a candy finish, you just need to string sweet papers on a thread threaded through a needle, having previously rolled them into tubes.
Garland of cones in the “snow”
A garland of pine cones is a natural and durable decoration, especially relevant in autumn, winter and, of course, on New Year’s Day. You can simply take dry and clean buds and tie them to, say, jute rope. But in order for the garland to take on a truly festive look, try decorating the scales of the cones with “snow” from any white paint. Now is the time to pull out that old white enamel from your stash!
Instructions:
- Pour a small amount of paint onto a paper plate and dip the pine cone scales into it.
- Turn the pine cone so that each end is covered with paint. Set the pine cone aside to dry and repeat with the remaining ones.
- When all the cones are dry, start hanging them on a thread. To do this, wrap the end of the thread around the bottom of the first pine cone and tie a knot. Then tie the second, third and all other cones around their lower parts, and tie a knot on the last “link” of the garland.
- Additionally, secure the position of the cones with a hot glue gun.
There are other ideas for decorating cones. For example, you can paint them completely (dilute the paint with water and dip each bud in it, or just use spray paint) and even stick gold leaf on the tips, as shown in the photo below.
DIY pine cone garland idea
See also the material: Topiary from cones, acorns and chestnuts - photo ideas and 2 master classes.
Making Tips
To make beautiful versions of garlands, it is worth considering some tips:
- to make the garland look fluffier, you need to use the ribbon in a twisted form;
- instead of colored paper, wrapping paper is also suitable;
- if you don’t want to sew with thread, then use glue to glue the elements;
- for a brighter and richer decoration, at least three bright shades of material are selected;
- If the paper is thin, you should not apply a large amount of glue, it will get wet and deteriorate.
Quiet paper flags
Bright colored flags on a ribbon are a classic decoration, appropriate for any holiday or just for interior decoration. Today we propose to make an updated version of it, namely from tissue paper or tissue paper and with fringe.
Instructions:
To make your own flag garland you will need: tissue paper/tissue paper of different colors, scissors, pencil, plate (any round object that can be traced), ruler, ribbon that can be folded in half and a glue stick.
- Fold the paper into a stack and draw a circle on the top sheet using a plate.
- Without disassembling the stack, cut out circles. Then cut the stack of circles into halves.
- Start creating fringe on the blanks. To do this, simply cut the semicircle into narrow strips, not reaching 1-1.5 cm from the top edge and maintaining approximately the same interval.
- Now simply glue the top edge of each half circle onto the tape.
- Using the same principle, make a garland of flags and pennants, but use paper of a different color.
Themed decorations
The easiest way to decorate any room for any holiday is with the help of garlands. They can be made quite quickly, used more than once and changed location depending on the desired effect. A garland takes up a lot of space, so any space is instantly transformed if you decorate it in such a simple way. A festive mood, a hint of a certain theme of the celebration or the specifics of a particular event, is easiest to organize with the help of garlands. Well, why buy something that you can do with your own hands, and even from improvised means.
New Year's and Christmas
New Year's garlands are a decoration familiar from childhood, which many people made as soon as they learned how to use scissors. Paper and fabric flags, chains made of cardboard or shiny foil, cut out snowflakes and Christmas trees - any paraphernalia of the winter holidays will be used.
Cones collected in summer can be used in winter to make garlands. It is enough to clean your blanks (cones) or paint the tips of the “branches” of future Christmas trees with white or silver paint (you can use gouache, acrylic paints and even white glue).
For a children's party
Perhaps the most common case of using garlands to decorate a room is a children's party. It doesn’t have to be a birthday; any celebration where children are present, you want to decorate it in a particularly elegant, festive, and varied manner. You can decorate with garlands the area of the so-called candy bar (a table with treats and drinks), the space above the table where children will sit, or the place where gifts will be stacked. And simply stringing garlands across the room or decorating the walls with your own hands will be an excellent reason for a festive mood.
From small colored cylinders (thick colored paper or colored cardboard) you can make dynamite (a hint at the explosive nature of the party) or candles - this is already an association with cake candles.
By combining paper with fabric or thread products, you can create original decor options. For example, paper rabbits with tails in the form of pompoms, which are easy to make even for a child. Ponytails can be made from cotton wool by simply rolling it into lumps.
For Valentine's Day
On Valentine's Day, it is customary to give homemade valentines. But you can go further and decorate an entire area for celebration, decorate a place near the table where a romantic dinner will take place, decorate the head of the bed or any other place in the house that is convenient for decoration. Of course, the main motif of garlands for Valentine's Day will be the use of hearts and all shades of red. By the way, the use of love themes in decorating a room does not have to be tied to any holiday. The interior of a girl's room in a romantic style can be decorated with similar decorative elements all year round.
From paper…
From felt...
Universal option
Regardless of what holiday you are going to celebrate - the birthday of a family member or pet, an anniversary or a national holiday, or maybe just one of your relatives has returned after a long absence and a party is being prepared in his honor - there are many universal options for making garlands for any occasion. These can be medium-sized balls strung on a rope or thick thread...
Or a flower arrangement, relevant at any time of the year and for any holiday. Moreover, flowers can be made from various materials. Use twigs or twigs for the base and your composition will be closer to nature.
Garland with glowing balls
Small spheres that glow in the dark and seem to hang in the air look very impressive. To make such a garland, you will need to buy a large number of ping-pong balls, prepare a stationery knife (or better yet, a breadboard knife) and, of course, the electric garland itself.
Instructions:
- Using a knife, cut a cross on each ball.
- Place a ball on each light bulb. Hooray! The garland is ready!
See also the material: 6 ideas for crafts in the shape of roosters.
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