How To Make a Wooden Bunting

I originally wrote this tutorial for Crafting a Green World.

This wooden bunting can be hung indoors or outdoors.

I hung mine outdoors, where it looks so happy and colorful!

I wanted to make my outdoor space more cheerful, and this wooden bunting, while time-consuming to create, has added a LOT of cheer.

Want a cheerful permanent outdoor decoration of your own? Here’s how to make your own painted wooden bunting!

Materials

There are kind of a lot of supplies at play here, but you can likely scrounge most of them up from your stash.

• wood. The amount of wood and the size will depend on the size of your individual bunting pennants. I chose my pennant size mostly because I had plenty of scrap wood that fit those dimensions.
• primer. I would have liked a spray paint primer for its ease and efficiency, but I certainly wasn’t going to go out and buy new primer when I already own perfectly good brush-on primer. I used Zinsser Bulls Eye, which was overkill here, but totally fine.
• paint. Since you’ll be sealing it, almost any type of acrylic paint will work. I used craft acrylics, artist’s acrylics, and indoor house paint–genuinely whatever I had on hand! The sample sizes of indoor housepaint are perfect for this project.
• sealant. Again, anything that you’ve got on hand will work, as long as it works with your paint.
• cording. You can use a natural material if you’re hanging this bunting indoors, but an outdoor bunting will need something sturdier. I used nylon clothesline.
• staples. I knew I’d figure out a reason to buy a staple gun someday, and this was my reason! Excuse me while I wander off to staple EVERYTHING now…
• tools. I used pencil, paper, ruler, saw, paintbrushes, and staple gun.

Step 1: Make a template and trace the bunting pennants onto scrap wood.

I made my bunting pennant template an equilateral triangle for simplicity (but I also think that a scalloped bunting would look SO cute!). I calculated an equilateral triangle with a height matching the width of the largest number of scrap wood pieces that I had, and used that as my template. Because board width varies a bit even on boards ostensibly of the same size, I had to fudge the template with some triangles, but it’s not noticeable in the finished project.

Step 2: Cut the wooden bunting pennants.

Pretend my partner is wearing safety glasses and appropriate footwear, sigh. Also, shout out to my seven-year-old picnic table refinish, and this pic of it that has let me know that today is the perfect day to drag out the pressure washer!

You can of course also make these cuts with a handsaw, and put your fingers in slightly less danger by doing so. Regardless of the tool, though, don’t be a Matt–wear your safety glasses!

Step 3: Prime the pennants.

Hand-painting each pennant on all sides, including the edges, was annoyingly time-consuming, but I got the job done without a single trip to Menard’s, so yay!

Step 4: Paint the pennants.

You could paint these pennants however you like, with fantasy scenes or garden scenes or just polka-dots or other embellishments, but my vision was a single color for every pennant, so that’s what I did!

This part of the project is VERY time-consuming, since every pennant will likely need at least a couple of coats of paint, with drying time in between, and rotation so that all sides can get coated equally. I set this up at a table in my family room and strongly insisted to my partner and two adult children home for the summer that this was a Fun Family Project That We Should All Do Together. Nobody was as enthusiastic as I was, ahem, but everybody chipped in at least a little, and other than one small adventure in which one adult kid managed to find a single tube of oil paint of unknown provenance sneaked into the acrylics and therefore paint a pennant that will essentially never dry, all the pennants got perfectly painted!

Step 5: Seal the pennants.

It took almost a week of chipping away at the project before all the pennants were fully painted, but I managed to seal the whole lot with polyurethane sealant in one afternoon. Choose a sealant that’s rated for outdoor use.

Step 6: Staple the pennants to the cording.

Everybody loves tools, so a couple of my helpers popped back up when it was time to start stapling the pennants to cording. I wanted one long single bunting, so I measured out twelve inches of cording on one end, then stapled the pennants to the cording with a couple of inches between each pennant. 

When we ran out of pennants, I measured another twelve inches at the far end and then cut the cording.

Knot or burn the ends of the nylon cording to keep it from unraveling.

Step 7: Mount the bunting.

Use mounting supplies appropriate to your home’s exterior to mount your bunting. It looks nicest, I think, if a long bunting has several mounting points, so that it’s got lots of lovely looping drapes.

Lol at my partner wearing the exact same paint-splattered basketball shorts and beat-up Crocs on this day. He apparently has a weekend uniform!

Just between us, my brand-new painted wooden bunting is probably just a titch on the gaudy side, but eh, I personally feel like the more colors, the merrier! You could class it up for yourself, though, by limiting the color palette and/or only putting the bunting out seasonally. Which actually gives me the idea of, hear me out… how about a black and orange and purple wooden bunting for Halloween?!? You’d have the most festive front porch in town!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Hung a Bunting on the House Because Resale Value is For Losers

But mostly because it brings me JOY!

One of my kids low-key makes fun of my "bunting personality," because I genuinely DO just love a bunting.

I dunno, y'all. They're just so pleasant. And cheerful! And I like making them. And that's all the explanation I feel like is needed.

And that same kid does also give me bunting ideas, so it evens out the mocking.

Anyway, the peace flags that I used to have on the front porch finally rotted away (does that mean that there's peace now orrr...?), and I got the idea to replace them with something that wouldn't decompose like a metaphorical representation of our imminently pre-apocalyptic society, sigh.

And I guess also with something that wouldn't say "PEACE", ahem, but whatever. Y'all know I only hung those peace flags up in the first place because they looked like a bunting.

I didn't want to have to buy anything new for this project, but the beauty of owning too much stuff is that you always have stuff on hand to make other stuff, so my partner in crime cut down quite a lot of our scrap wood (but don't worry--we somehow still have quite a lot of scrap wood!)--

--I primed it--

--and then I snookered the entire family into painting soooo many wooden bunting flags with me:

This was randomly a bigger project than I'd thought it would be (as if every single project I start doesn't turn out to be a bigger project than I thought it would be, ahem), what with the multiple coats and drying time and washing paintbrushes, etc., and the little kid and the partner in crime both noped out near the start, leaving my older daughter/true partner in crime and I to do most of the work--

--but finally I could drag all the flags outside and seal them!

Guess who noped back in when it was time to play with the staple gun, lol. Getting to use the dangerous tools is everybody's favorite part of a project!

Yet another helper noped in when we moved the project out to the yard:

Here's where I started to worry that maybe I should have narrowed my color palette down a little bit...

But it's too late to back out now. When you're nailing something to the house, you have to commit!

And it turns out that I DO like the cacophony of colors, at least for the very specific space that is my front porch:

It's not a space that we use a ton, but somehow, now that it's so much more festive, the grill has migrated over here, too, and we do spend more time enjoying it. And see all that blank expanse of ugly brown siding?

I feel like some painted barn quilt blocks in different sizes would look so nice there. Time to see if I can sneak in just one more family project before the little kid goes back to college!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Do You Want To Admire All Our Handmade Heirloom Easter Eggs?

Because kid-made or not, if they've survived two entire childhoods of seasonal abuse and they're still kicking, they're heirlooms now!

RIP to most of our handmade stash, which did NOT survive two entire childhoods of seasonal abuse. To be honest, some of those earlier kid-made eggs got covered up by later efforts, so they're possibly still kicking around somewhere behind fifteen coats of paint, some tissue paper, and lots of Mod Podge. I'm genuinely a little sad that all our papier mache eggs that I cut open so we could put treats inside were eventually destroyed, but Easter eggs with jellybeans inside take a LOT more abuse than Easter eggs without!

This is the sole survivor of the papier mache eggs, probably because it's too pretty to cut:

The kids made these in 2013, when they were eight and six. Look at those little hands!

Complete with a Christmas shirt and chipped nail polish for maximum little-kid effect.

We made the felted wool Easter eggs even earlier, when my only big helper was my five-year-old. Her rainbow egg is a masterpiece!

We "cheated" that day and felted these in the dryer because it was cold outside, but felting wool is an awesome outdoor activity for a little kid. Who wouldn't want to spend a warm afternoon splashing around in soapy water?

And look what that tiny artist was capable of just five years later! I think this dragon flying over the mountains is my absolute favorite of all our heirloom Easter eggs:

That was a big year for woodburning, and woodwork in general. A Girl Scout Woodworker badge led to all kinds of projects, from stomp catapults to PVC pipe weapons to rediscovering all their old building blocks--and how they could be painted and woodburned, too!--to the set of woodcarving tools that the Easter Bunny left them just a couple of weeks later.

I'm pretty sure this galaxy egg was a pandemic project when EVERYTHING was galaxy-themed:

We've also got galaxy Christmas ornaments made that year, and I feel like there were a lot of galaxy food attempts. I don't think any of them particularly worked out, but in the process we all ate a lot of activated charcoal, so at least we got our systems all cleared out. Not the worst thing during a pandemic!

This hot glue embossed egg was a proof of concept more than anything:

I LOVE how it turned out, but for some reason we never made any more?

The big kid and I later used that same technique to make potion bottles for Halloween, though, and we made several that I still pull out every year.

And then there was the mandala year--

--which may have been the same year we discovered novelty painting?

I display this every year, but in my mind it's still unfinished because I want a big white star there on the blue. Maybe this year!

One year I was SO excited about the idea of simply using wood stain, but then when I made this first one I thought it was super ugly:



I actually really like it now, though? I wonder if I've got any different colors of wood stain kicking around out in the garage that I could try...

This year, my partner jumpstarted each kid's personal collection of heirloom Easter eggs with an egg that he painted for each of them and put into the care packages we sent to them at school:

Just between us, we're at the point with care packages where I'm wary of putting something I made into them lest the kids complain--I apparently "do too much," which I'll just tell you in case you ever think of saying that to someone else is most directly translated in the ears of the recipient as "You are too much," and the people it's told to don't feel real cool about it.

But joke's on them, because now if I want to send them something handmade I just make their father do it. They're obsessed with their father, so they inevitably love it, and I'm fine being the power behind the throne.

Now, off to puppetmaster my way into a grad photo shot list that the big kid agrees to because I've manipulated her father into acting like each pose is his idea...

P.S. Want to see what other mischief I (and the cats) manage to get up to? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page for updates!

This Is How You Hand-paint Wooden Easter Eggs

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World!

These hand-painted Easter eggs are just as fun as the plastic ones–but they’re beautiful enough to keep forever!

It can feel almost impossible to avoid plastic Easter eggs. They’re cheap, they’re pretty, you can put treats in them, and they are EVERYWHERE. I don’t have a blanket hate for plastic eggs–I'm happy enough to thrift them!–but the world does not need more brand-new plastic *anything*, and there are so many other meaningful, eco-friendly options that are just as fun and a LOT more beautiful.

Such as wooden Easter eggs!

Some of the wooden eggs in my current Easter stash are a full 15 years old, and those eggs painted with the little-kid techniques of my then 5- and 7-year-olds are honestly even more precious to me now than their more recent creations of galaxy, Captain America, and shark-themed eggs.

Whether you’re a little kid or all grown up, the technique for hand-painting wooden Easter eggs is super accessible. Here’s all you need, and how to do it!

Materials

• wooden Easter eggs. I’ve always bought all of my unfinished wooden eggs from Casey’s Wood Products in Maine. If you check out their online store at just the right time, you can even get lucky and find second-quality wooden eggs for cheaper.
• primer. This is an important first step in painting unfinished wooden eggs. Any kind of primer will work, as long as it can be used on wood. I often use the same Zinsser that I use for my walls, but I also really like Rustoleum’s Paint+Primer spray paint when I want a base coat that’s not white.
• paint. Again, nearly any kind will work! I use primarily acrylics, as oil-based paint is a Whole Other Thing that I have no desire to mess with. House paint works great, especially the little 8-ounce samples that you’ve definitely got on hand if you dither as much about wall colors as I do. Craft acrylics and artist’s acrylics are both terrific, and paint pens are indispensable for detail work.
• paintbrushes.
• (optional) sealant. If you’ve got polyurethane sealant on hand, it’s perfect for making these painted wooden eggs shiny and impervious to damage. Mod Podge is less resistant to damage, but also works. But if you don’t mind eggs that aren’t shiny, acrylic paint doesn’t actually need to be sealed. Sealing the egg also means that you can’t repaint it later, and a LOT of my stash of wooden eggs have been painted and repainted and repainted again. Not every wooden egg painted by a 10-year-old has to treasured forever, ahem!

Step 1: Prime the unfinished wooden eggs.

This is a simple first step that will keep your beautiful hand-painted embellishments from soaking into the wood.

Using the primer of your choosing, give each egg one or two coats, then let it cure for the time recommended on the primer’s packaging.

I keep a lot of paint on hand, so my favorite time-saving technique for these eggs is to use a spray paint plus primer to give the eggs their primer and their base coat simultaneously. This is perfect for my galaxy eggs, for instance, which are black with galaxy embellishments, and my Captain America egg, which is mostly red. If you plan to paint wooden eggs as a family or kid activity, it can also be nice to start off with eggs base-coated in a variety of colors. It’s a fun little boost to creativity!

Step 2: Paint the wooden eggs.

This is where you can really let your creativity prevail! There is no limit to how you can paint an Easter egg, whether it’s abstract or hyper-realistic. I’ve got all kinds of abstract Easter eggs, several galaxy ones, two that look like the Jaws movie poster, one for every Avenger, more rainbow eggs than you’d believe, and as of this Easter, one wooden egg painted for each of my kid’s colleges, already tucked into their Easter-themed care packages (along with these treat-filled paper Easter eggs!) and wending their way across the country to them.

It’s a matter of personal preference, but I really like to use house paint or craft paint for larger areas, artist’s acrylics for more detailed areas, and paint pens for the tiniest, most specific, or most accurate details. You can add infinite layers and additional details as long as you let the layer beneath dry first. Use masking tape or stickers as stencils or to tape off areas, and make your own templates by drawing very lightly with pencil directly onto the surface of the egg.

When you’re finished, don’t forget to sign your artwork!

Step 3 (optional): Seal the finished Easter egg.

The only tricky part about polyurethaning or Mod Podging these Easter eggs is that you have to let the paint fully cure first, then let the sealant fully cure again before the finished Easter eggs are ready to roll. In a pinch, I’ve been known to collect up all our newly-painted eggs after Easter and polyurethane them before putting them away for the season.

These wooden Easter eggs are sturdy enough to last for an entire childhood’s worth of Easter egg hunts, and after that, you’ll love seeing them on display. I’ve got my favorites of our painted eggs sitting on my coffee table in my kids’ childhood Easter baskets, and I’ve only cried a few times looking at them.

Summer break can’t come soon enough for me!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Pumpkin Pounding: A Halloween Project for Small Children

 

This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World way back in 2009! 

Encouraging my children's independence is VERY important to me. Not only is it easier for me to parent two small children who can pour their own milk and put on their own coats and carry their own balance bikes up and down the front porch stairs, but it's also a priority in my parenting that my girls see themselves as capable individuals who can handle challenges and perform the meaningful work of day-to-day living. 

Because of that, carving pumpkins into Jack-o-lanterns can be a really frustrating experience. 

I do permit my children to cut with sharp knives (with supervision), but not to use them on something as thick and unwieldy as a pumpkin. Although there are around-the-house materials that make pumpkin carving an activity more appropriate for small children (subject for a later post), my girls' favorite Jack-o-lantern craft is something that we call pumpkin pounding.

Pumpkin pounding is a hands-on activity that uses real tools on a real pumpkin, and each of my girls was able to do it with help at age two, and independently by age three. The best part, however, is that in the end, depending on how enthusiastic a pounder your kid has been, you end up with a real, live Jack-o-lantern for sitting on the porch steps and popping a candle inside. 

You will need:

• field pumpkin that's not too round. You want to be able to sit it on its various sides, as well as its butt, and not have it roll all over creation.
• hammer. You can lay out a variety of hammers for your kids to experience, but the best tool for them is one that's as light as possible but has the widest hammer head
• nails. Again, lay out a variety to try out, but the best ones are as wide as possible with the widest head
• knife and scraping tool and whatever else you'll need to cut the top of the Jack-o-lantern and scrape the insides

1. Set the pumpkin up in a space where kids have enough room to swing a hammer, and where they can get in the correct hammering position--a low table or the floor or a bench, etc. 

Be prepared to leave the pumpkin in that space for a few days, to give the kids the chance to come back over and over to this activity independently. 

2. Show your child how to press the tip of the nail into the pumpkin flesh until the nail is held there by itself. That's the safest way to hammer, but older children can also be taught how to gently tap the nail into place with their hammers. 

For kids younger than three, you may need to set up a handful of nails like this for them to hammer. 

3. Let your child hammer nails into the pumpkin. 

Remind them not to hammer the pumpkin just for the heck of it, but pumpkins are extremely sturdy and surprisingly forgiving, and even though your kid will hit the pumpkin a LOT, and HARD, as they're aiming for that nail, it's not going to crack.  

4. At about five years of age, your kid can also learn how to use the claw end of the hammer to lever the nails back out of the pumpkin when she's done hammering. Otherwise, you'll probably need to do this, so give her plenty of nails to work with before she needs your help. 

5. The Jack-o-lantern will show best with as many nail holes as possible, so feel free to take a whack at the pumpkin yourself. It's amazingly cathartic. 

6. When everyone is completely finished with the pounding (and this may take several days), cut off the top of the pumpkin, and scrape out the insides to finish it. Pop in a candle, and enjoy your pretty pumpkin. 

My kids and I are, for some reason, inordinately fond of our autumn-themed craft projects. What are your favorites?