Mini Craft: Paper Triangle Garland

It's 102 degrees and I'm staring at a beige wall.  This ends now.

Typically, I like to "decorate" my walls with paint but since we are currently in a rental I am forced to be creative.  Cue Pinterest.

After some searching and brainstorming, I settled on creating a garland from sewn together paper triangles.  Paper found in the scrapbooking section of craft stores has a good weight to it- it's a little thicker but will still go through the sewing machine.  Our usually color palette is blue/greens but I was drawn to a coral paper and decided to go with it!  I settled on 3 coral shades, one gold with a pebble texture and a solid natural paper tone.

Once home with my purchase (which was less than $5), I perched myself under the fan with a paper cutter and House Hunters International and cut each paper into strips then back into triangles.  A few episodes later, I had a ka-billion little paper triangles ready to go.

I measured my triangle angle and taped a guide on my paper cutter to make for much faster cutting

While possibly daunting to someone intimidated by a sewing machine, the easiest part of this project was sewing the triangles together into strings.  I just ran each triangle, point first through the machine and let the machine stitch a few empty stitches in between each triangle to give small gaps.  Definitely doable for the beginner sewer.

I chose to sew the triangles into groupings of coral then gold but depending on the paper you choose, a more mixed up pattern could be really cool.  I didn't think about it until I was totally finished, but the gold pebble paper I used only had the color on one side; the other side is white so in the future I would probably sew any single-sided paper back to back so you don't end up with one white side.

Garlands sewn, I was ready to hang.  I experimented with a few options using blue painters tape to carefully and temporarily hold up my strands.  Then, as it so rarely does nowadays, lightening STRUCK!  I was hit with an idea to first hang a piece of wood from a slight overhang at the top of the wall.  Lately, I've really liked the juxtaposition of using some natural woods mixed in with other elements.  It was like kismet because we had some scraps that were the perfect size laying around outside from our trailer remodel.  For the odd size lumber needed in the vintage trailer, Andy had to rip down the 2x2 boards we bought so I found a cut off about 1/4" thick.  I used 4 eye hooks and clear fishing wire to hang the board from the ceiling.  Dumb-dumb here stands on a ladder, suspending wood on a 100 degree day.  I looked like a swamp monster by the time I had the board straight.

From there, I used the clear fishing wire to hang my garland.

Once I had one strand arranged on the wood, I decided I wanted to cross it over the doorway leading down the hall so I used a second strand for this part.  To stick my garland to the other side of the doorway, I used sticky tack.  For now, it will do but I kind of have a vision to put a hook that looks like a twig or something here for future garlands.

And now I'm obsessed.  Don't know why I didn't think to do this earlier but it makes the space.  I love how the triangles all have some movement with the air in the room that they seem to be dancing on the wall.

The suspended board was a stroke of genius and makes the whole look.  I feel like I'm living in an Anthropologie.  Now my mind is racing will all the possibilities.  I'm thinking cascading raindrops in the spring, E has declared winter will be snowflakes.  The possibilities are endless.

An afternoon of "work" and a $5 price tag.  Pretty awesome in my book.