Project Pinterest: Halloween garland

As I'm spending a lazy (sore and tired, really) afternoon on the couch while Espen sleeps, I thought that I might as well do a Project Pinterest about the Halloween garland we have hanging in our kitchen.

Excuse the weird angle, it's impossible to get a straight shot of this area without getting the lamp involved.

We recently got a color laser printer, and I have been celebrating by churning out all sorts of colored printables. I stumbled across a great birthday bunting/pennant/garland for Nick's birthday a few weeks ago, and quickly found it impossible to live without a festive garland over our dining table. Luckily for me, it's the holiday season, so I should be set through the end of the year at least! Are there any good holidays in January that call for a garland?

Well, after Nick's birthday my hunger for garlands was insatiable, so I hopped on Pinterest and did a quick search for "free printable Halloween garlands", and soon came up with this one from Talk Crafty To Me. It has that slightly retro vibe that I love in my Halloween decorations, and was cute (but not too cute) without being creepy.

I printed it on card stock, and just cut out the circles by hand. It was a bit time consuming (especially when someone kept stealing my stuff to for his "Espen store"), but still easy enough that I could do without too much concentration. Then I just punched two holes at the top of each circle to thread ribbon through. I bought a length of ribbon at good ol' Walmart for less than $2, and that was really my only expense, seeing as I already had card stock at home.

Here's where things got a wee bit tricky: The circles aren't printed in order on the PDF, and the website doesn't show you a photo of the finished result, so you are a little bit on your own as far as positioning things on the ribbon. The text part was of course simple enough (just keep track of your H's and A's, so you can stick to the alternating black and orange pattern), but things took a bit more thought and creativity with the patterned and illustrated circles. I just laid everything out on the living room floor and shuffled it around until I liked how it looked before stringing it onto the ribbon. At this point it's a good idea to make sure your ribbon isn't twisted so the circles will hang flat against the wall.

And then just hang it up! I climbed on the chair in the kitchen and hung it myself at first, but then Nick helped do a little adjusting when he came home. He untwisted the ribbon in a few spots, and then grouped the circles so there was a little bit of ribbon space in between each word and section of circles.

Pretty quick and easy! The printable itself is free, so your only real cost is the use of the printer, card stock and ribbon. The most time consuming part is cutting out the circles, and the rest is honestly done in a few minutes.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and feels like it packs quite a lot of festive punch for something so simple. I also love that it's durable and easy enough to store that I can just plop it in a ziploc bag and pull it out again next year. If you were feeling really fancy, you could laminate each circle before punching the holes to make it really long lasting.

So my verdict is thumbs up for Talk Crafty To Me for this great little freebie, and maybe a tiny thumbs down for not including any photos of the finished result. While putting it together myself was fine, it would have been nice to see what the person who actually created this had in mind. All in all, a good find!