Napkin Holder & Straw Decorations

Hello everyone,
My name is Holly and I am sharing my first project with you at Alterd. I am from Australia, therefore we do not celebrate 4th of July, however our flag is pretty much the same colour so I created a couple of simple decorations for 'Australia Day' which falls in January.

Back in highschool I made this hideous looking letter holder that has been sitting on my shelf for years. I decided it would actually make a pretty simple napkin holder for Australia day parties.

I created some cardstock roses from a youtube tutorial here. And put together a few pieces of ribbon and a scrap of thin card which came off some packaging.

I attached the white card to the back piece of wood, folding it to cover the back also. This got rid of the unattractive hump shape of the wood (what was I thinking). I then tied a couple of pieces of ribbon around the back panel and tied a bow to the side.

I then attached some scrap doily over the front wood panel, in the centre between the panels and then attached the two paper flowers, using foam dots (I would recommend a heavy duty adhesive, such as helmar/mod podge).

This is an example of making use of something that I could have just as easily thrown out since it was not very pretty. Now it has a purpose at least once a year for celebrating Australia day... or any other day when red, blue and white seems like a nice idea.

With some scraps of my flowers I also created some straw decorations. To do these, I cut 3 pieces using a Spellbinders nestables label set. You only need 2 pieces of different sizes, however I wanted to have the red, blue and white incoroporated. I then folded them each in half and cut 2 horizontal lines with a craft knife into the front piece. This creates a slot when folded in the opposite direction.

Once the 3 pieces were stuck together, I then slid a bendy straw in the slot.

This would look great with stars for 4th of July. However it can be done with any shape so here is another example with butterflies, perfect for a baby shower or little girls birthday party.

You are only limited by your imagination in the case of both of these projects.

Please let me know if you have any questions about these two altered projects as I am happy to assist ... and I am only a newbie to tutorials :-)

Have a great week,
Holly xo