My apologies! It’s been too long since I’ve posted. My computer had a few hiccups so I sent it to a friend to have him clean it out and start me on my first (I know, welcome to the 21st century) external hard drive. {Insert shout out here: Thanks Brad for your help!}

As promised I have put together a couple holiday tutorials from my last post on mantle decorating for the holidays.

First up is the J O Y banner I used on the frames in my holiday mantle. I used twine but ribbon and the like will do the job. I had some card stock laying around from another project so I used it for the pennant style banner pieces. I used oil pastels for a rustic deep red (crayons, markers or paint could have worked as well).

I cut out some triangles, wrote my letters…

and hot glued them onto the twine that I had cut to fit the frame.

This took a whopping 10 minutes to create!

Then I just tucked it up where I liked it on the frames and scotch taped it in place. I feel like this little touch actually made the mantle. It’s my favorite part!

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Next up is the twine wrapped wine bottle. Or as I call it, the tWINE bottle. Har har.

All you need is some twine and a hot glue gun. Ribbon, yarn or string are some other alternatives. I used this technique on a wine bottle but it could easily be applied to jars, vases or flower pots. I started with a generous amount of hot glue at the base of the bottle and began wrapping. Every few inches i did another generous blob for hot glue and continued wrapping around and around. It got trickier at the neck of the bottle though. When I got to the base of the neck everything started shifting and slipping. I just took my time and glued way more often. When I got to the top I just cut the twine and glued generously again. Fairly simple. (I had step by step photos but they must be on my old phone since I just switched to the iphone 5- woot woot!)

Here they are on the mantle!