HIGH END BUNNY WREATH DONE 2 WAYS!/DOLLAR TREE DIYS/SPRING FLORALS/SPRING FRONT DOOR DECOR 2024

Hey everybody, I'm Karen. This is The Loft, where I'm going to teach you how to level up your DIY projects. And if you're here, that only means one thing, you are wicked smart. So I know that you know how to do all the YouTubey things and touch all the buttons to show me the love. So if you're ready to rock, let's roll. Let's get right into DIY number one. So we're going to take this bunny wreath form. And we're also going to use a 14 inch round wreath form. And this particular sign from Valentine's Day, all from the Dollar Tree. And this yarn from Hobby Lobby. I got it for like $3.50 when it was 50% off. So I want to wrap this thing in a figure 8 style. Because I don't want the neck to get all bulky. So I'm going to wrap the head and the body separate. Leaving a gap at the neck where I'll join them together. Because I didn't want to join them together and then have to wrap it. Because this thing is like 30 inches long when it's finished. And it's kind of awkward to work with. And a little bit bulky. So I just kind of put a little hot glue to start and clamp it down so I can pull on it. And I'm just wrapping. You guys all know how to do this. A little hot glue every once in a while to kind of hold it in place. And I kind of push it together every once in a while to kind of get it all nice and tight. So you see where I left that gap? That's where I'm going to join it to the 14 inch wreath form for the body. And I was out of zip ties which would have been much easier and quicker. So I just glued them temporarily with some hot glue and clamped them down with the little Dollar Tree mini clips. While I got out my floral tape. And I'm just going to wrap a little bit of that tape around each ring. So after I get all the rings attached, I'm going to start wrapping the yarn from the right side of the head. And I'm going to go across the neck where the two forms meet around the bottom and up to where I started in the beginning. So I get a nice transition there across the neck. And you can see here I get them all wrapped up. And I'm going to start wrapping the yarn. I'm just going to let the music play while you watch me do all of this. Okay, so we got our bunny all wrapped up. And I did go over the ears two times to make it a little extra fluffy. And now that we got him all done, we're going to embellish him. Oh no, first I'm going to show you how I'm going to paint this sign. So I picked this particular sign because I loved the flowers on it. On the top, which is actually going to become the bottom of the sign. And I'm going to do a color match. And I'm going to paint over the words. And that pink is a Craftsmart color. And it is called Rose. And it was a pretty close match right from the get go. But I have a little bit of white on the side and actually a little bit of tan. Because it does have a little bit of like a wood grain pattern on it. So I'm just going to put some of my paints out here. And I'm just going to kind of go for it. And I got pretty lucky with that Rose colored paint. It was a pretty close match. And it did cover pretty good. With like one and a half coats. I mean look at that one little stroke. I knew it was going to be pretty easy to do this. So I go all over it. All over the front. Before I really add any white to it. I'm going to go all over the front of this with one coat of the pink. And then I'm going to start adding some white. Because that for some reason seems to cover up the wording better. I don't know why, but it does. So I'm just trying to mix it up. Trying to get the right shade. And then when I get down into the part where I want to keep. Like going in and around all those little vines. And those little leaves. And flower buds. I kind of turn my brush on its side. And I use the corner. And I got very, very, very little paint on my brush. I just really want to blend that color as close as I can. And then you'll see. Actually I'm not sure if I show you. But when I get it all done. I do go over and dry brush the whole thing. With some white. And that kind of helps blend in the original part of the sign. Where the flowers are. Because that does have a little bit of sheen on it. And once I painted it with the pink. It had more of a matte finish. So I found that that really helped to blend that in. So I'm going to just let you watch me do my finger. Okay. So you can see here. That I wanted to bring out that little black detail. In the center of those flowers. And we glued that to the back of our 14 inch wreath form. And now we're going to embellish him. Or her. And I have these scraps of flowers. Mostly from Walmart. And different ribbons that I love. To bring out the color in those flowers. On the print of the sign. And I did get some black check. Because I really want to. You'll see how the black really kind of pops. Makes all these colors pop. So when I work with florals. I kind of like to lay everything out. First. Kind of see how I like it. And I kind of play around with the leaves in the background first. So I can see what kind of shape it's going to kind of take. And I kind of want to do this offside a little bit. And I'm just playing around with some lamb's ear. I think I had some sprigs that came off of some ranunculus from Walmart. I think that's a big cabbage rose that came off of a Walmart pick. And some of those little pink ranunculus. I love them. And I think. I don't know. Just some little pink rose buds. I think that came off of something else. This is why we don't throw anything away. Because we know we can use them at some point or another. So I'm going to go and glue that all up. Presto magic. There it is. It's all glued up. Now I'm going to work on his bow. That's going to go. Why do I keep saying him? This is clearly a her. Around her neck. So I like to make my bows. I call them loopy bows. And I like to mix and match ribbons. And you can see I just burned the end there after I do the dovetail. I give it a little burn to kind of seal that. So it keeps it from fraying as I work with it. There's a lot of pulling and tugging and fluffing when I make bows. But I'm going to spare you all of that. But I like to make two loop bows on various kinds of ribbon when I make my bows. I like to kind of mix and match patterns and colors and sizes. Wide ones, thinner ones. So I do a lot of two loop bows. And then in the end, I kind of put them together. Sometimes I'll layer them. In this case, I'm going to layer it intentionally. But a lot of times I like them just more of a loose organic. And I'll pick each one up and kind of pull it together like a little bouquet. And just kind of fluff it up and twist it all together that way. So this is ribbon that I have left over from Christmas. I love this burlap ribbon with the black and white buffalo check. And the way I make my ribbons, I do like a pinch and a twist. I pinch it, twist it, and then make my loop. This is always the way I've done it. It's horrible on your fingernails, but it gets the job done. So I go through all of them and then I get to this ribbon. And this ribbon is not wired, but I loved the pattern on it. It's also slippery. So it was a little bit of a challenge. And I wanted to make this ribbon, this bow, a four loop bow. Because I knew that it was smaller and I wanted more of it to show. So I get the four loops done and I get this one wired. And then you'll see how I layer them all together. And then I'm going to make my tails after. So I usually start with the widest, sturdiest ribbon, which is usually a burlap ribbon. But in this case it's going to be that linen stripe ribbon. That one's going to go on the bottom and then I'll layer them over top. And then I'm going to add all the tails to the bottom. And then you'll see how I pinch this up. So you can see here that I decided at the last minute to add some florals into the center of this bow, just to give it a little more springiness. And to tie that, you know, just to bring some of the florals down to the bow. And you'll see the black. I used the skinny black buffalo check ribbon. I used that last. That's on top so you can see that. And now I'm going to add the tails. And I don't think I make you watch me do all of this. Most of them have two. I only had a little tiny bit of that green left. So I've got one long tail and one shorter tail. But you can see I just take a piece of ribbon, dovetail the ends, hit them with the lighter, and then I just kind of pinch them in the middle to kind of make two tails and give me a little something to glue up under the bow. And that's it for this, but I'm going to show you the very last little details that's going to bring all this together. So while you're watching this, I'm going to explain that I did not get this on video, and I'm sorry. I'm really bummed because it was my first time using the air-dry clay with the silicone molds. I found a mold that has a bunch of different borders because I wanted to make like a frame for a little tag that's going to go underneath this bow. Now last year when I made this wreath, I used a Dollar Tree tag, a little tag sign left over from Halloween. But this year I wanted to try and make my own little frame and give it a little bit of a wood look, and I'm sorry that I didn't get that on camera. But here it is. And I painted it white, and I glued it to the outside of that wood plank from Dollar Tree. And now I'm going to go in with some antique wax, and I'm going to go over the white chalk paint with the antique wax to give it a wood look. And hopefully you'll be able to see it in a bit when I give you a close-up, but this has a lot of little detail in it. And the wax was kind of puddling up on me, so there was a lot of going back and forth, back and forth, trying to just kind of spring that wax around and getting it out of all the nooks and crannies. And then I go in with some black chalk paint to make it look like a little chalkboard tag. So I'll let you watch. And here you can see my little chalkboard tag Hopefully you caught the details in that. Sorry that it went kind of fast. But now I'm going to handwrite this little sign. It's going to say, Hello Spring. Now I know a lot of you don't like your own handwriting, and there's a lot of ways that you can do this. If you don't, you can use a Cricut and vinyl. And if you don't have vinyl, you don't have a vinyl machine, you can do the transfer method where you print something off of the computer, flip it over to the other side. On a dark surface, you want to scuff the back of that with chalk, flip it over onto your project, and then trace over it with a pencil, and it will leave a slight chalk mark line on your project for you to go over with your paint marker. But I'm doing the downstroke a little bit thicker on those block letters on the left side. I'm just doing the one thicker, and the rest of it was thinner. And then here is my full calligraphy. So it's your own handwriting. I happen to be blessed, and I do this a lot for a living. I do a lot of typography for signs. My mother has beautiful handwriting, and I'd like to think I get it from her. But as you can see, I'm just going to go with the downstrokes. I'm going to widen that and make those lines thicker, and the upstrokes are going to stay thin. And when you get that all done, it's pretty cool how you can make that look like faux calligraphy. It's my jam. I love to do it. And just practice. Like a lot of people ask, even though I've always liked handwriting, and my handwriting has always been decent, I still have a handwriting journal. I still try new things, and I keep doing it. It's muscle memory. Once you get used to it, it gets more familiar, and it gets easier. So I'm going to take this sign, and I'm actually going to put some Jenga blocks on the back to kind of raise it off of the little round sign that I painted over. Because when I put it under the bow, it wanted to kind of droop down, and I didn't want that to happen, and I didn't want it to maybe get blown. This is going to go on my front door. So, yeah. I did put some Jenga blocks on there to kind of secure it into place, and it wouldn't be hanging. So here's our bunny, all finished. I did wash my hands. I got all the antique wax off, and all the chalk paint, black chalk paint off my hands. I'm going to take my little tag, and I'm just going to load it up with hot glue on that back corner, and then I'm going to clamp it down while that glue cools off and sets up. And I make sure to get, like, a little bit underneath on the Jenga blocks. Give that some pressure, and I'll clamp it and hold that down for a little bit. And now I'm going to show you how I kind of brought this all together and the reason why I used the black ribbon and I painted the black centers of the flowers. I'm going to take these black wooden beads, and I'm going to glue them into the middle of my flowers. And look at how it just makes it pop and just levels it up a little bit. Look at that right there. Isn't that so pretty? I think it just gives it a whole higher-end look. It's just really so cute. This is one of my favorite things I love. It gives your eye a break. The black gives your eye a place to rest, right? And it makes all the other colors around it just pop. And when I get these all down on the headband, you'll see that it kind of... As a designer, I think in threes, okay? Three is the magic number for me. So once I get all these little beads glued in, it's going to draw your eye around the whole piece. You're going to see the black at the top, right? You're going to see the black at the side, and then you're going to see the black mixed into the ribbon. And that makes your eye kind of travel around. I'm going to give it a coat of Scotchgard before it goes outside. And here it is. The final reveal. Here comes the second one with DIY number two. All right, guys, so here's our second bunny wreath form. And I've got him all wrapped up already, and I used this really pretty Sherpa yarn that I got at Walmart. And I believe it was half off for $5. So I cut off pieces, and I just kind of made them in more manageable balls while I did that. But for this little guy, I decided that I'm going to completely wrap his ears, okay? And I did that after I had already wrapped the frame, but then I realized that that was actually going to help this yarn kind of be more stable and not slide up and down the wire so much. So I did this one, and I'm not going to make you watch the whole thing, but, you know, I got both of them done. And here we go. So I've cut out this felt, this kind of really pretty light pink felt, and I decided that I was going to glue that onto his ears. And I glued it down first with some hot glue just to kind of stabilize it. But then I used my Aleene's Tacky Glue on the back because I didn't want the glue to kind of seep through or show the hot glue, and I wanted to make sure that I got a good adhesion to this. I wanted it to really get into the fibers of the yarn and really stick good. So I used my Tacky Glue. I love that stuff. I use it on everything. And I do the same thing to the other ear. And I can't remember if I bend his ear now or not, but you'll see. I make his ears extra cute in a minute. So I'm just going to go in the same thing here, and I'm going to put a little bit of my Tacky Glue all around the edge, and I'm going to kind of spread it out in the middle and push that down really good into the yarn. And now we're going to... Nope. Now I decide I'm going to fold his ear and hope that I don't break the form because they're pretty flimsy. So just pretty self-explanatory. Look at that. Isn't that the cutest thing? Oh my goodness. Alright, so now we're going to embellish him. I'm going to give him a little bit of a headband, and then I'm going to actually also make his bow off-camera because you don't need to see me making another bow again. And just like I did in the last one, I kind of lay out my flowers. These are some more of the same. Little ranunculus and the little rosebuds and little snips of some, I don't know, little baby's breath flowers and some greenery. And I'm going to go in, and I'm going to arrange those until my eyes are happy. And I'll go and I'll glue that all together. Alright, you guys. So now I'm going to show you how to level up these dollar store carrots and make them look more realistic. Okay, like you've just pulled them right out of the ground with the roots and all. Okay? Always the first thing you do, whether it's the little ones or the bigger ones, is pry open the bamboo leaves at the top. Okay, or whatever, not bamboo. What is that? Raffia. Okay? Just pull them apart. Get the thicker strands and get your fingernail in there and keep kind of like shredding them. Okay? That's going to fluff up the top and just make them look so much prettier. Okay? So we get that all done. We get that all combed out. And then we're going to take some twine and we're going to glue that to the very bottom. And we're going to kind of wrap it on itself, glue it to itself a couple of times, and then kind of taper it down a little bit so it gets a little bit kind of wiggly and straggly at the end. You'll see what I mean right here. Kind of glue it and then kind of wrap it on itself onto the glue and kind of squish it and twist it as I go and kind of shape it while the glue is still a little bit warm because, you know, we have no feeling in our fingertips, right? All right. So when I get that, I'm going to leave a tail. I'm going to leave a little bit of a tail. You can see there how it looks kind of like curlicue, like the little root of a carrot. So when I cut that, I'm going to take my lighter and I'm going to singe it a little bit. So that kind of gets all the little fuzzies off, but it also almost like tightens up the twine and it also darkens it a little bit, so it gives it a little bit of color. So now here I'm going to go and I'm going to separate that twine into the three strands so it looks like there's little roots sprouting out. And I get those all apart. And then that little mixture that you see at the top of my screen and that little tin, that's just some Aleene's Tacky Glue with some water. And you can use decoupage if you wanted to. And I'm just going to brush some of that onto the twine because I want it to kind of stiffen up and I don't want it to fray on me anymore. This is also going to go on this wreath and it's going to be outside, hopefully on somebody's door. So I get the glue on there and I kind of twist it and scrunch it and kind of get it to be kind of curly. And I should have left it as is, but I went in and I snipped it a little bit and I think I kind of cut this one a little bit too short. But nonetheless, they're still super cute. And when they are all bunched up together, oh my goodness, it looks like you'd pull them right out of the ground. Look at that. Isn't that so cute? Oh my gosh, so cute. So I do that to all of my carrots. And then I take the tops off the bigger ones. And I'm going to take some twine and I'm kind of doubling it up at the end because these are pretty big holes so I'm kind of making it a little bit thicker. And I'm just kind of pushing it in there with a little, I don't know, Dollar Tree tool that I had sticking around. And I'm going to do that to all of the carrots and we're going to bunch them all together. I'm going to keep them all on the string and we're going to tie them all together and I'm going to hang this on this wreath. But before I do that, once I get them all strung, I'm going to go over the roots and the bottoms of the carrots with a little bit of my antique wax. I want to kind of dirty them up a little bit so to speak, make it look like you're just putting them all together. Okay, now I've gone ahead and I've made my bow, waft hammer and I added some florals to the center. And I used the cutest ribbons from Dollar Tree. Well, first I used this gingham check. Look at this carrot ribbon from Dollar Tree. It's so stinking cute and it was the inspiration for this whole wreath. It's a little flimsy so I did kind of layer it with that orange burlap to kind of give it a little bit of structure. And these little tiny carrots I stuck in there. They're a little too bright for me so I gave it like a little bit of a white wash. I don't know if you can see the difference there in the color, but ooh, that's a crazy orange those little styrofoam carrots. So now I got my bunch of carrots and I'm going to tie them all together into an arrangement that I like till my eyes are happy. And once I get them all bunched up the way that I want I'm going to knot them and tie it right underneath the bow. And then I'm going to see the greens at the top of the screen there that I pulled out of the carrots. I'm going to take those and I'm going to glue those to the top of the bow to make it look like the bow is wrapped around this big bunch of carrots that you just picked fresh from the farm. And that's it. This one gets a coat of Scotch Guide before it goes off to its forever home. And here it is. As always, I hope you enjoyed today's video and that you found some inspiration here and maybe learned something new. If you did, you know what to do because you're wicked smart. I don't need to tell you how to show me the love and press all those buttons for me. I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you taking the time to stop by the loft and hang out with me today. So thanks for watching everybody and I hope to see you in the next one.