DIY Card Display

Mike and I overslept this morning because when we got home from a Christmas party last night we decided to watch Jimmy Fallon instead of sleep. But in our defense, Oprah was on! I hadn’t seen Oprah since… Oprah!

But anyways, back to why I’m really here.

Christmas Card Season

Last year, I had a stack of Christmas cards that sat on our dining room table for far too long into January… (Uh.. February) that never got looked at besides when they came out of their envelopes. This year, I was determined to come up with some sort of year long decor that could display Christmas cards during this season.

Remember these?

I bought them at a garage sale 2 springs ago in Sterling. They sat outside our little house in sterling for months (my bad) so I had quite the mess when I decided to pull these out of the garage.

It was colder than cold outside so hosing them down was not an option. So I scrubbed these guys (by hand) with soapy water until all that nasty was gone. It took some time. Hindsight I probably would have waited for one of the warmer days we had last week.

But after the scrub and letting them dry they looked good as new!

Next was filling those little holes. I called in help from the handyman.

After we let it dry and sanded everything down a little bit, it was time to paint.

Seafoam Pearl was the color we had on hand. It is also the color of our front door so it works well in the room. 

It took three coats to really get these guys covered. And now that they’re on the wall and I can look at them really closely – a fourth would have been just right. I like it being imperfect though. These are old shutters. 

I called in for help from the master when it was time to hang them on the wall.

We wanted them to be secure enough that if they were bumped they wouldn’t crash down on someone. Luckily they are very lightweight. And then came the ribbon. I bought this ribbon at Hobby Lobby – I love it! I attached it with hot glue.

The bow is fake. I used hot glue for this one too because I ran out of ribbon for a real bow. Oops! And the final result?

I love it! It moves us closer to having more things on our walls and it displays all the beautiful Christmas cards we’ve received this year. I finished this project on Thursday and it’s already almost full. During the rest of the year I plan on displaying Grad announcements and Save the Dates. It would also be fun to put up little prints that could be changed out depending on the season.

What do you think?

9 days till Christmas, people! (and it’s my birthday week) Happy Day!