Then I saw this post over on Canadian Living and something in my head clicked and these little pots of gold were born. While they are really rather simple to make I thought I would share the directions with you.
You will need:
a rainbow pack of Chenille Stems,
baby storage cups (I got these at the Dollar Tree but any 1/2 cup storage container
in the right shape will work,
in the right shape will work,cotton balls,
black paint
cardstock (not shown)
paintbrush (not shown)
Directions:
First toss all the lids into the junk drawer to be raided later for a recycle craft, you don't need them for this project. Paint the outsides of each container with the black paint. I know the picture shows the rims painted on the inside but I discovered that it really wasn't necessary. Allow them to dry and then add a second coat of paint.
(Yes that is a plastic bag under my painted cups. Didn't want to move the tablecloth or paint it so I used what I had on hand as a drop cloth!)
If you want a shiny pot I would suggest adding a coat of clear spray paint after the black has dried. This may help prevent scratches appearing on the paint also. That is just a guess but it sounds good right?!
Once you pots have dried, or even while you are waiting for them to dry if you are in impatient crafter like I am, go turn on your glue gun and grab your chenille stems. You want to line up your stems so that they are even and they are in the correct color order (cuz mine are NOT in the correct order in the pictures. Fortunately no on noticed and I am not telling them!). The correct order is red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet/purple. Also cut a cloud shape out of your cardstock. You want it to be about 1 1/2 -2 inches across but you can really just eyeball it.
Next you are going to pinch the ends together so that they are flat but really tight.
Finally run a bead of glue across this and hold until the glue sets. To be honest, I usually wet my finger and kind of smoosh the glue down to get better adhesion here.
No flip it over and run some glue along the back side as well to doubly secure the stems. Repeat for the other end of the stems.
Now, here is the bad news. H arrived home from school about this time, Princess A awoke from her nap and I had to venture out to pick up Little Man J from school as well as help with homework, start dinner etc. I tell you this so that you will hopefully understand when I tell you that I had procrastinated on this project and I had to complete it THAT DAY so the rest of the steps were done in the midst of controlled chaos and the camera didn't come out of hiding so I have no more pics. Even the completed project pics were taken with my phone since I rushed out and forgot my camera when I went to decorate! Hope you guys have a good imagination for the final couple of steps. They aren't really hard, so I am sure you can figure it out!
Okay, without bending the stems, find the middle and cut across all the colors of the rainbow so that you now have two six inch rainbow pieces. I laid them on the counter and gently curved the stems. Hold in place without pinching tightly and again glue the stems together on both sides. Your chenille ends will not be a straight line, think more of an angled line with the bottom stem being longer than the top. You don't need to be neat with the glue on this end since we are going to hide it in the cloud.
Once the glue is dry, stretch out a cotton ball until it is fluffy and glue to one side of your cardstock cloud being sure to cover all of the paper. It is okay for you cotton to extend past the paper. Put this side down on the counter. Place your slanted end of the rainbow on your cloud and glue it in place. Again fluff a cotton ball and now glue this one over the rainbow and cover the cardstock.
The final step is to take the unfinished end of the rainbow and hot glue it to the inside of your painted pot. Taadaaa!
Your pot will be top heavy and won't stand up on it's own. To fix mine I took some found rocks, painted them gold and hot glued enough into the bottom of the pot to hold it up. I did this because I wanted the pots of gold to remain standing after the kids at church raided the gold candies so that the grown ups could at least see them!
On a side note, I wanted to show you my very first leprechauns that I made
and Doll Pins These are made from doll pins that I ended up cutting down to size. I had to adjust the pattern widths quite a bit, but I still think they turned out cute. Besides, I am sure leprechauns come in all shapes and sizes despite being magical creatures!Until next time,
