Crafty bits

I admit, I'm a little wedding-obsessed. Instead of focusing in on the dress though, I'm all about the decor. I'm also a little too cheap to pony-up and by the schmancy pre-made stuff. So, in a fit of madness and mostly boredom, I started in on way too many projects. One of which has great results, but is taking forever. I am not a patient person, so it's slow going on this right now. I also kinda suck at taking photos of the whole process...my bad.

Materials:
Fine grit sandpaper
Container (Glass votive, old drinking cup, etc)
Sticks of varying length & width
Glue gun & several glue sticks
Branch snippers


Start with a container. In this case, I'm using a cheapy paint can. It was used as a flower pot in a previous life...

Grab some fine grit sand paper and give your container a once-over with it. If using glass, skip this step. Whatever you use, make sure you give it a good wash & thorough dry before hand.

Warm up the glue gun! I like to use sticks about an inch longer than the container itself. Make sure the bottom of your sticks are cut level with the ground, then go wild! I'm using dried branches from the sunflower jungle I finally cut down. 

Grab a stick, then look at where the stick meets the container, and put a dab of glue on the top & bottom of the container to secure. When placing the following sticks, put dabs of glue along the sides as well as the top & bottom. Hold in place until fairly secure and move on. 

It should like zis.

There comes a time when you may find yourself with a gap, like so.

Grab a wonky little bit of branch, and snip the top at an angle to match up with the gap.

Glue in place, like zis. 

Then cut to length, like zis!

You may notice the sticks tend to lean after awhile. You can fix this by going around and gluing them straight up and filling the gaps in later, like above, or just go with it. 

Which is what I did below...

Did I mention I was bored, and a little crazy? Yup.

Continue until it's covered all around with those larger sticks, then go back over it and fill in the gaps with the smaller bits left over from trimming. If you have a lot of stringy bits left over from the glue, take a hair dryer set on "high" for a quick blast to melt 'em away.

Yep, it's a little tedious if you're a fan of quick results. But, the results are pretty killer. So far I've stuck-it to a tea light holder, plastic nursery pot, and a little olive jar. I'm pretty stoked on how these are turning out, especially the plastic nursery pots! Our recycling center doesn't accept the recyclable pots (uhm, cuz that makes sense), so I have an ever growing collection if these babies just hanging out. The vague plan in my head is to eventually cover all those babies, and have a prettified stash of container we can use for the wedding and beyond.