Another Mantle Project

I'm slowly putting together our Christmas mantle for the season and I keep getting myself wrapped up in these projects. There is one more easy one and then I'll be able to reveal the entire mantle! For now, I'll just show you this one.

This is how our mantle looks every day (minus the pumpkin on the books - that's seasonal, haha!)

Ahh!! I just love our mantle. It may be my favorite thing in our house. Now, if we could just get the tree outside trimmed so that we could actually use the fireplace we'd be all set :)

I've had this idea in my head about the Christmas garland. I wanted something full and green, but with something unique and personal. So I started with a big, fluffy strand of fake greenery from Michael's for about $7. Then I got some paper for about $12. I used the glittery paper to punch out 120 stars.

Then I glued these words onto these precious little gift tags. Oh, how I love these!! I think both sets were $15. I still have about twice as much for other projects so that's awesome.

I'm lovin' the words this year!! I strung the stars and gift tags on some twine that we already had and wrapped the twine around the fluffy garland. So easy!! This is the final product:

I've photographed carefully so as not to show you much more of the mantle so it's a fairly big reveal next week sometime :) The total cost of this garland was about $35, which is by no means cheap. However, when I looked into buying garland it would have cost me around $80 or more for the look I wanted. So, in comparison, it's actually quite cheap. Or, you know, I can just justify the money I spend rrreeeaaallll well :) Here's another looky:

I'm pretty pleased. There's a few things about it that I'm not thrilled with. For example, the length doesn't quite take up the whole front of the mantle, and the words aren't spaced evenly the whole way across. Overall, though, I like it and think it fulfills the image I had in my head.