DIY Paper Garland

I've been pretty excited about holidays lately and my new "thing" is making garland. It's a really simple and inexpensive way to add some holiday spirit to a room. I started on Etsy, trying to figure out what kind of garland I could easily manage re-creating. About half an hour later, I had this hanging over the entry way to the kitchen!

 

I noticed that a lot of these types of garland on Etsy were sewn together with a sewing machine. For fall/Thanksgiving, I wanted to incorporate a more natural look and the hemp from my previous projects was just what I needed! I gathered card stock in my favorite fall colors, a one-inch circular hole punch, scissors, and photo squares to make this super cute garland. If you don't have photo squares, spray adhesive would work well too.

After cutting off about six feet of the hemp, I began cutting out my card stock circles with the hole punch. After I had a large amount of each color, I placed photo corners on the back of two circles and adhered them together with the hemp in the middle. I continued this process with a pattern of five different colored circles until I reached the end of the hemp cord, knotting a loop at each end for ease of hanging. Ta-da! I saw similar garland strands on Etsy for $10 plus $4 for shipping. This project didn't cost me anything!

While I had my supplies out, I went ahead and made a garland for Christmas. Instead of the fall colors and the hemp, I used red and green circles and a white satin ribbon. Same concept and just as cute!

I originally got the idea to make my own holiday garland when I found bat cut-outs at the Dollar Tree just before Halloween. As you can see from the photo below, I turned it into something festive with a regular hole punch and some orange satin ribbon.

 

How do you add simple touches to your home for the holidays?