Grandma's Door Hanger
For holiday and family gifts my favorite thing to do is look around the house and find leftover material to use. This Mother's day craft made use of some old 1/4 inch plywood we had laying around that needed to be cleaned up any way! I was also purging some of my Spring floral and these made a beautiful new home for it all. So with my recycled materials and hot glue gun in hand I created two Mother's Day gifts for $0 out of pocket and they turned out adorable! Both Grandma's have gotten compliments on them from the neighbors. Yay!
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I enlisted the help of my handy hubs and had him cut out two 18 inch diameter circles using the 1/4 inch plywood we had. He can be a bit of a perfectionist so I stole the boards away before he could fret about whether or not they were prefect. I knew I would be putting flowers and leaves around them so no one would notice a bit of wonkiness if it was there. I drilled two holes for my rope to hang through next. Try not to forget to do this step early on. I've learned through trial and error. If you wait to do your holes, you'll end u with exposed natural wood which won't look as nice.
To get the rustic driftwood appearance I used black and white paint. I didn't get crazy fancy with this project and just used some left overs I had lying around. Since I was only making two boards and didn't need a ton of paint it was a perfect opportunity to use up some of my more empty cans that wouldn't work for bigger projects. I painted on the black first and did a nearly perfect basecoat. I knew I was going to be going over it with the white so I didn't spend too much time making this layer perfect. Once it was dry I went over it with the white. This coat I created a wood grain effect with by going from one side to the other then picking up my brush and starting again. I did not stroke back and forth. Doing these long continuous strokes in one direction creates the wood grain lines that I was hoping to achieve. I did this from top to bottom then started back at the top again. It took about 3 passes down the entire board to get the look I wanted.
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After the paint had dried I covered the entire board with a layer of modge podge. I've learned from other projects that coating a project before doing vinyl can be a lifesaver. The vinyl can pick up and remove some of your paint if you need to move it. The vinyl also does not stick well to painted or natural wood. The modge podge creates a smooth surfacd for it to adhere to. I used my Cricut to create the design and measured out the center of my board.
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After the vinyl was on, I started in on the floral. I used wire cutters to break down the bouquets I had on hand and hot glued them into place. I created balance but not symmetry between the left and right sides of the board so the hangers looked natural but not messy. I braided together three pieces of twine for the hanger and knotted them together in the back of the hanger. The bow was created using 1" thick ribbon in a contrasting color for a pop on the door hanger.
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My final step was to glue a long layer of felt on the bottom back of the door hanger so it would not rub against the Grandma's doors and leave any paint residue or cause wear. I used gray felt so it blended with the backing.
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Overall, this was an inexpensive and quick Mom's Day gift that both the Grandma's loved and still proudly display!
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NOTE: This post was create after the project had already been completed. Take a look at some other more recent projects for more in-depth tutorials and photos. Subscribe to my mailing list below to see project as they happen!
