Draping The Halls

I didn’t actually mean to keep this whole week of posts so holiday-decor-centric… I do have new non-festive projects in the works, I’m just getting a little held up by paint drying, mis-dyeing and wood measurement snafus (plus I’ve been sitting around staring into the Christmas tree lights and licking the Thanksgiving apple pie tray clean, so that’s been eating into my productivity).

Anyways, I’m keeping my holiday home decor costs to a minimum this year. No new LED lights (maybe for next year if they go on sale at the end of the month), no excessively-garland-wrapped stair railings, no crazy manger settings, no fully-operational train sets. Already I’ve saved $30+ by buying a mini-tree, and another pretty penny by stringin’ my own tin foil balls, but I took the sparkly sheen of that garland a wee bit further this week to extend the joy (for about 12-cents, yo).

DIY doorway garland.

The doorway garland in this post was inspired 100% by an Anthropologie display, and of course I was moving throughout the mall much too quickly to take a picture of it from afar, only in passing, squeezing in close enough to snap this shot and mental-note that it was constructed of foil, string, and good ol’ hot glue. Prettykins.

In my local store (maybe in yours too) they were strung strand-by-strand in a canopy fashion over the entryway display, but they’d look pretty canopied anywhere (like maybe over your bed and down behind the headboard [drool], or straight down a wall covered by a frame gallery [double drool]), but I decided to simplify the interpretation in order to decorate the open doorways on the first floor of the house.

Editor’s Update 12/2/2011, 10:50PM: I happened to be at Anthropologie again today and snapped a real-life shot of the display. Silvery, draping, dreaminess:

For mere pennies, I borrowed about 4-feet of tin foil from my kitchen supply, and brought much more joy to my living room. If you recall, I’ve had a mega-crush on the rainbow garland that I made for Pete‘s surprise 40th birthday. Such a crush, that the garland hung in place for 4-months, just until this week, swirling with glee as we walked beneath it (that being, if paper garland can really show emotions).

Cutting circles out of tin foil was a little agitating at first because they weren’t symmetrical and were too jagged. I solved this problem to a degree by taking the cap off my baking powder container and creating impressions in the flat sheet of foil; they’re still entirely freehanded, I didn’t use a punch, but it helped to have guide lines to follow. I rocked out several dozen circles in a short period of time (Only an hour, maybe? While we listened to the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. Easy.)

Just like the awe-inspiring strands in Anthropologie, I attached each circle to string (essentially free, just some kite string-type roll that I had on hand) with the hot glue gun (less than one stick of glue leftover from some other crafty project).

I created a series of strings. Six, to be exact. Three longer strands were hung in an overlapping pattern in the doorway between the living room and the dining room (replacing the rainbow garland happiness but instead, radiating a beautiful mirrored light). Very appealing and sweet!

I did the same on the opposite doorway into the kitchen, just with shorter strands/fewer circles because it was a shorter doorway. From this angle, you can see that I just hung them temporarily with thumb tacks and staggered their placement to create swooping, drooping decor.

The light reflections this foil garland provides are pretty, albeit hard to capture on camera. It’s enough to catch your eye each time you walk beneath them.

Hope you try it too. It’s unexpected doorway happiness. You won’t be let down.