DIY Jumbo Dreamcatcher
Welcome to the first post from Party No. 11: A Nontraditional Thanksgiving. This party's theme was a no brainer for this month. I love Thanksgiving as a holiday and as an overarching idea in life (celebrating what you are grateful for is always a good call). I thought about throwing a big sit down dinner with all our friends, a "Friendsgiving" of sorts, but with crazy schedules, I landed on having this gathering be more low key. Two of my best gals were available last Friday night, so I invited them over for a night of food and ladies only conversation.
The biggest project I undertook for the party was this pretty and etherial jumbo dreamcatcher wall hanging. I was immediately inspired when I saw a "blessings dreamcatcher" image on Pinterest a few weeks ago. I searched for more DIY tutorials, but didn't find many examples.
Esthetically, I was inspired by some gold dipped ornaments I found while wandering the Christmas aisles of Target. The shimmery feathers seemed like the perfect addition to a fancy dreamcatcher, and I decided I had the correct supplies to do this craft idea justice. I incorporated lots of neutral tones, with winter-white yarn and ribbon, natural wood and gold.
I bought a medium sized hula hoop from the dollar store - the hula hoops at Target were all over $7! I already had the cream yarn, string, ribbon, beads, and wooden shapes.
Covering the hula hoop took a little while, but was easy to do while watching TV. Once it was completely covered, I criss crossed the thin thread across the hoop, to create the random pattern. I looked up the weaving technique for "classic" dreamcatchers, but couldn't quite get the hang of it. The back and forth was so much quicker, and I liked the look, so I went with it.
The next step was adding the embellishments that hang from the bottom. I played around with the placement for a little while, adding the thicker cream ribbon, then the sparkly beads and wooden shapes, and of course the three gold dipped feathers.
At the party I asked my guests to write down some of the things they are thankful for onto precut paper strips. We challenged ourselves not to have repeats, and included serious answers like our family and friends, and more cheeky answers like Netflix, podcasts, and our favorite foods. We attached them with mini gold clothespins (thank you Michaels dollar area!). The weight of the paper and clothespin require them to hang vertically, instead of horizontal, but I think the downward direction fits.
I loved the way it turned out, especially filled in with everyone's handwritten blessings. I could see this DIY being awesome in a kids' room, or a college dorm. I am definitely repurposing it as wall art in my craft room, and may fill it with dreams and goals for 2016. The neutral tones I used sorta blend in with this apartment's wall color, and I would love to see it against a different colored painted wall in the future, or with brighter colored yarn/supplies.
I knew I wanted each table setting to get a feather, and in my mind there was a mini dreamcatcher along with it. I found this gold floral wire at the dollar store, and wrapped it around a cup to form circles. I used a wire cutter to trim the circles, then used the same yarn wrapping and string crossing process as I did with the jumbo one.
And ta-da! Check out how fancy they turned out!
A simple project, that had a big impact - my favorite kind of craft.