Pink Overload and a Paper Fan Medallion Tutorial

I have never decorated for Valentine's Day before. I am not sure if it is because I have Lillie now or maybe it was getting the Silhouette Machine for my birthday, but for some reason I thought it would  be fun to do this year. I didn't want to spend much money and I wanted to use mostly black and white with a little hint of pink. I did pretty good on the first part. I spent about $14 dollars on supplies - I bought six frames from the dollar store ($6) and then used a half can of spray paint ($3) to cover four of them in a soft white and kept the two black ones as is, and then bought some patterned paper (I already had the black and cream cardstock) at the craft store ($5). And then I spent another $28 on a whole bunch of tulips and a little rose bush from Trader Joe's. Everything else I either already had or was free. The second part, I didn't do quite so well on. Somehow my plan for just a hint of pink went awry and I ended up with WAY more pink than I meant - whoops! Oh well, Lillie keeps telling me it is pretty so at least she likes it - I think poor Jon wants to gag! Haha!

I really love how the tulips look and am relatively happy with how the two urns with the branches or "dead trees", as the males in our family call them, look with the black and white paper ornaments hanging from them. The mantel, though, turned out WAY more "crafty" looking than I like and I kind of cringe when I look at it. Seeing how it will only be up for four or five days, though, I think I will survive. Plus, every time we walk in that room Lillie points to the L-O-V-E banner and squeals "I made that!", which makes me smile every time. If I ever decorate for Valentine's again, though, I think I will go with something more simple on the mantel - maybe just the vases with some flowers. 

I do love the pink tulips in this bucket! 

 ( I don't like how it looks sitting on the little plate but it helps to keep the bucket more stable on the ottoman in hopes that Lillie won't knock it over...so far so good, for now, anyway.....)

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I used the gift card that came with my machine to download several designs off of Silhouettes website such as the Love Birds one and the keys both shown below. I also used some of my own designs (like the girl holding the heart) and framed those as well.

 

My favorite thing to do with the Silhouette right now is to cut out frosted vinyl. On each of my little cupcake stands I put the letters L, O, V and E.  You can also etch the designs on but I like this option better because I can just peel the letters off and do something new once Valentine's Day is over with.

I also used it to put this image on my vase!

 

And we have the je t'aime pillows out. 

As much as I don't like the mantel I do like how the branches turned out. I think it's because the simple black and cream theme was what I originally had intended on doing and just somehow I got way off track!

Here is how to make the little fan medallion things. I saw this in a Martha Stewart magazine years ago and have made them several times. One year I used them to top all of my Christmas presents with. They are really easy.  (Sorry for the horrible photos, they were taken late at night when the lighting was awful and therefore are really bad!)

1) First cut your paper. You can use cardstock but regular weight paper is actually much easier to work with. I cut my 8.5" by 11" sheets in half and my 12" by 12" sheets into thirds.

2) Next fold over a small part.

3) Then fold it back again accordion style.

4) Do that until you have the whole thing folded.

5) Now pinch it together and fold it over one way (I don' have a weird disease - my fingers are just covered in paint).

6) Then bend it back the other way.

7) Then I use double sided tape (you could also use glue) to pinch two ends together. 

8) Make sure it is stuck together good.

9) Now do the same the on the other side and you are good to go!

Then you just use a glue gun to glue on an image or a button or whatever you want to embellish it with.

I hope you all have a most wonderful weekend! I am almost done with the projects in Lillie's room and then it is on to the nursery! I know it will seem hard to believe after seeing this post but I don't plan on using a single drop of pink! I will show you some of my inspiration in my next post.



P.S. Linking up to Wendy's Frugal Friday!