Ugly Christmas Sweater Garland & Gift Tags

Paper ugly Christmas sweater garlandIt doesn’t quite feel like Christmas until you see your first ugly Christmas sweater. They have been out in full force this year. Paper Ugly Christmas SweatersDon’t get me wrong, I love a good ugly sweater. In fact I’ve always wanted to throw an ugly Christmas sweater party just so I have an excuse to buy one (like this one or this one or this). Ugly Christmas Sweater GarlandWhat’s not to love? Tinsel, pom-poms, bells, Christmas sayings! Give me all of it! The tackier the better. Ugly Christmas Sweater GarlandIn order to get a little ugly into our holiday we created this ugly Christmas sweater garland, which also can work as funny gift tags for your presents. It’s probably even more fun than just going out and buying a Christmas sweater because you get to fill your own sweater with whatever tacky items your heart desires. Ugly Christmas Sweater GarlandTo make these sweaters, you will need to rummage through your craft supplies and pull out any random bits and bobs that you have, such as pipe cleaners, bells, ribbon, felt, string, anything! You will also need craft paper. Ugly Christmas sweater garlandWe found a stencil online by just Google searching sweater outline and then traced that onto white paper and cut it out. Next, we traced our stencil on some grey cardstock. We did this a couple of times to get the number of sweaters we wanted. Ugly Christmas sweater GarlandNow is the fun part – to decorate! Each of our sweaters have different decorations on them. For some we outlined the sweaters with patterned scrapbook paper. Others, we traced a Santa or Reindeer image from online and then colored them in on the sweaters. For the wreath we used a silver pipe cleaner and glued it to the center of the sweater and added a bow to it. We also stamped on some of the sweaters. It is really up to you how ugly you want to make your sweater! IMG_8950We also made some smaller ugly sweaters using the same process for gift tags. Ugly Christmas sweater gift tagsThese gift tags add a fun and festive flare to any present! Plus they are super easy and enjoyable to make. Once we started, we couldn’t stop making them and are still having ideas on what would be silly to add to them!Ugly Christmas sweater gift tagsBonus points – bring an ugly Christmas sweater gift tag to your next ugly Christmas sweater party! Ugly Christmas sweater gift tags

Now tell us – have you gone to an ugly Christmas sweater party? Do you like ugly sweaters or are you over it? What would you decorate your ugly sweater with?

DIY ugly Christmas sweater garland and gift tags | Popcorn & Chocolate

 

Ugly Christmas Sweater Gift Tags | Popcorn & Chocolate

DIY Christmas sign

DIY Christmas Sign

DIY Christmas signYou know that section of Target right when you walk in that has little gems for $1 or $3? Welp, that section is my downfall. I cannot resist picking up a fun holiday decoration and, well if it’s only $3, what harm does it do?? Fast forward a couple of years of always picking up that $3 item, and somehow you start to realize you might not want to put that item in your cart this time. This sign was based off of something we saw in said section. However, instead of paying for it, we decided to use our crafty little brains and DIY our own sign. DIY Christmas signTo make this fun little sign all you need is some foam poster board (cardboard works too), some letter stencils or vinyl letters (which is what we used), and paint! Cute reindeer to hang beside the sign are optional, although highly recommended. We got these cuties at T.J.Maxx… another store I can’t resist!DIY Christmas signFirst we outlined an arrow shape onto poster board and cut it out using an x-acto knife. Next we laid down our vinyl letter stickers to spell out santa, reindeer, and elves on each of the arrows. Now time to paint! We painted two coats over each of the arrows.

As a bonus step that isn’t necessary, we outline the letters once they were completely dry with a thin sharpie so they would stand out more. Finally, peel off the letter stencils to reveal your beautiful sign!DIY Christmas signTo hang the sign we taped string to the backs of the arrows, but you could also hang them individually or even put them on a festive pole! DIY Christmas signWhich way should I go? DIY Christmas sign

Tell us – do you have any holiday decorations up? Do you get sucked into the $1/$3 bin at Target or is it just us?

DIY Christmas North Pole Sign | Popcorn & Chocolate

Christmas Advent Calendar

IMG_4150We hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend full of lots of delicious Thanksgiving food. We sure did and now we get to have leftovers for the rest of the week! Pumpkin pie brownies for breakfast anyone?

IMG_4195Now that Thanksgiving is over, we can look forward to Christmas and begin shamelessly decorating our apartment full of snowflakes and moose. So far we have hung up some Christmas lights and put out fun decorative pillows, but as Christmas approaches we are sure to add more!

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Because tomorrow is the first day of December, we have a simple advent calendar that uses minimal supplies. All we bought for this project was a small 6×6 pack of scrapbook paper at T.J. Maxx for $3. This pack was from American Crafts and had some really cute pages that we just couldn’t resist. T.J. Maxx’s always has the best craft supplies for cheap. Along with the craft paper we just used some plain white paper to cut out the numbers.

IMG_4147What we did for this advent calendar was ripped out 25 pages from the scrapbook paper book and then laid them out on our floor in a Christmas tree shape. We decided we liked our tree to be taller rather than wide and so ended up with two rows of 5, two rows of 4, and then it went 3, 2, 1.

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Once the tree was in a style we liked, we then traced numbers1-25 onto white paper and cut them out. Okay, we have to admit we first tried to free-hand the letters, which came out horrible, so we had to trace the numbers.

IMG_4212Now is the fun part – instead of creating a advent calendar that gives out a piece of candy or present each day, we decided to make ours interactive. We wrote down 25 different activities to do, so each day we flip up the day and reveal something we have to do that day.

IMG_4177IMG_4257Here are some examples: make hot chocolate, go ice skating, watch Elf. We thought this would be a fun activity to get us in the Christmas spirit and maybe even do some things we wouldn’t normally do, like go ice skating. Since we work during the day we broke up our weekends differently and had slightly more involved activities on those days. We stuck to the more simple tasks for the weekdays, such as making hot chocolate.

IMG_4247We wrote the activity on the back of piece of the paper, but you could put it hidden on the front as well. We mostly wanted to be able to use the paper again so we didn’t write on it.

IMG_4126We hope you enjoyed our advent calendar and let us know what activities you would put on your calendar! Happy December everyone!

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DIY paper Christmas tree advent calendar | Popcorn & Chocolate