Quick St. Patrick's Day Decoration

Here's a cute decoration I made for St. Patrick's Day.  I used it last week on the food table at the quilt guild.

I bought everything at JoAnns a week or so ago.  I'm sorry I didn't take pictures so I could do a tutorial... but here's what I did.

The shamrocks were cut from one piece of scrapbook paper and one of card stock.  I got a design of a shamrock off the internet and enlarged it.  I put the front and back pieces together (wrong sides together) and cut out the pattern.  Oops... did I tell you I copied three different sizes???

Then I heated up my trusty glue gun. This was the low heat glue just to save my fingers a bit.  I used bamboo skewers to hold the shamrocks.  I glued the stick to the wrong side of the card stock first -- the stick was covered about 1/2 way with paper.  Before I put the second paper over I put double sided tape on the rounded part of the leaves... just to hold the two pages together a bit better.  Then some more hot glue on the stick. I lined up the shamrocks and stuck them together.  Remember to press where the tape is also.

To prepare the watering can I trimmed a piece of styrofoam to fit into the can. Then I put a little hot glue on the bottom of the styrofoam and positioned it on the bottom of the can. Heck, who am I kidding. I just let it drop in as I couldn't get my fingers in there too!

After the shamrocks had thoroughly dried I stuck them into the styrofoam in an artistic manner.  Decided to turn one around to give some variety.  I then tied a bow around the watering can.  I found some old Easter grass in the attic and threw that on top to cover the styrofoam.

Voila! One finished St. Patty's day decoration. I think I could also use the same idea for hearts at Valentine's Day, eggs or bunnies at Easter, stars at the Fourth of July... You get the idea.  Now you can run right out and make your own decoration.  I used one sheet of 12 by 12" shiny green card stock and one piece of scrapbook paper.

And, now on another topic.  Can you believe these paws???

Hum, they really don't look all that bad here... but they are full of Virginia red clay. Ugh.  I've got two dogs worth of messy paws...

I'll leave you with these trees in full bloom.  Wish they were in my yard.  Spring is busting out all over my part of central Virginia.  Next week the red bud will be fully blooming.  

Time to go up to the studio... I've got one more quilt to get done before I visit Jenny next week. 

Happy Quilting All!