Sunday, February 19, 2006

Decorating For Mardi Gras

Yay! It's time to decorate for Mardi Gras! The first thing I started with was making a Mardi Gras feather wreath for the front door:

I took a large wire wreath-form (there weren't any styrofoam ones at Hobby Lobby this big), two mardi gras feather boas, some floral wrapping tape, and some clear string to make it. Scissors too.


First, I wrapped the wire form with green floral tape. This is the tape that has adhesive 'activated' when you tug on it just a bit. I wanted to use this to make a solid color underneath the boas - it took all of about five or six minutes (and less than one roll of tape) to get this all wrapped up.


The first boa goes around and around the wreath form. I used clear jewelry string to secure it to the form, and when I got to the end of the first boa, I tied that end to the form, and tied the start of the next boa to the form *and* the end of the first boa to make sure it was really secure. Once the wreath was complete, I cut off most of the white string (in the pic below) that wasn't used to make sure it wouldn't show.


Here's the feather wreath now:


Next, I hung it on the door and added beads. I added one huge string and lots of regular-size beads in purple, green, and gold. I like the way it turned out! The beads that are hanging off the sides of the wreath remind me of all the beads that get stuck on light fixtures and oak trees...


After the wreath was done, I started decorating the mantle. I took all the Valentine's Day decorations down:


Then added purple, green, and gold silk to the mantle. This took 5 yards of fabric in each color, which is enough to leave a little 'puddle' of fabric at the bottom, which is really pretty:


Then, I added a couple of masks:


...and some throws we've gotten so far this year, plus peach nectar, mini moon pies, some Hubig's pies (yum!), and mardi gras lights:


Here are a couple more pics of the mantle:


posted by ginger Sunday, February 19, 2006