A Christmas Card Holder that Makes me Shutter because it is SO cute {Love Sweet Love Guest Post}

Hi friends!  Happy Happy Tuesday after Turkey Day!
I hope you had a great Monday!!!
Today I have a very special treat for you-----you get to hang out with Ang from Love Sweet Love!!!
I adore this girl.
ADORE.
Andddd I know you will to!
Check out her super sweet Christmas Card Holder and
then head over to her place and say hi to her from me!!!
And get excited because she is also going to be the co-host of our Crafty Scrappy Happy Party Tomorrow Night!!

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Hello wonderful Crafty Scrappy Happy followers!!! I am Angela, the voice behind Love Sweet Love, and I'm just beyond THRILLED to be guest posting here for Jaime today! This girl has been my bloggy BFF since the beginning, and I'm sure you feel the same way about her as well because she makes such an effort to befriend anyone who come across her path!

If you come over to my little corner of the blogging universe for a visit, you'll find things like easy DIY projects for the home, craft ideas for kids, thrift store makeovers like this and this, organization ideas, and holiday decorating (the reason I started blogging!). My life is over-flowing with Sweet Love and I needed a place to share it!!


I think we can all agree that ONE (out of 1 bajillion million-totally a number) of the things mrs.jaime is fantastic at, is up-cycling. Soooo, although I'm no where near as talented as my dear hostess is in this arena, I thought in light of being here at Crafty Scrappy Happy, and helping co-host this weeks linky party, I would share a project I recently up-cycled for Christmas.

Old shutter...to Christmas card holder!


I got this idea from a friend at church who was making them for an activity. She found a local store in our area that was selling old shutters for just $2 a piece-score! I definitely was not going to miss out on that deal so I grabbed a couple from her and busted out my Rustoleum spray paint!

I knew I wanted the color to come out a deep red to match some of my other Christmas decor, so I first spray painted one coat of Kona Brown and once that was dry added a couple coats of red.

It came out looking like this:


Which I actually really loved, but since it's absolutely impossible for me to leave anything alone, I wondered what some sanding and dark walnut stain could do...



Oh SQUEAL! Love!


I have so many projects that happily pay my garbage man visits, that on the rare occasion that something actually comes out the way I envision it in my head, I get pretty darn tootin' excited about it.


Originally I was just going to add a simple felt christmas tree, or stocking to the bottom corner for some embellishment- not that any is really needed since the cards that will go in the shutter are what "embellish" it-but when I turned out with this vintage bad boy I knew some of these old-school cut outs (from Michaels) were going to be sneaking there way onto the shutter.


Something about these old "pictures" just makes my heart melt...


...and I got a little carried away...


...but seriously, can you blame me?!?!

Since Christmas cards haven't started going out yet, I picked a few homemade/vintagey type ones that I've kept over the years and put them in so you could have a little looksy.


And that's it!


And since I hadn't decorated for Christmas yet when I made this, you get a picture of it in my makeshift studio-aka my living room...with a florescent lamp...at night, yikes. So just imagine it's sitting next to pretty Christmas decorations, in nice lighting, mmmmkay?!


Oh! And in case you were wondering, the cards stay tucked nicely into the slats because of the stick of wood that runs up the back (you know...the thing that you use to open and close the shutters, and if that rod has a name I obviously don't know what it is) but if you find a shutter that is missing that piece you could just use some wood glue and glue a thin piece of wood to the back and I think that would do the trick as well!




Yay! A pretty, organized, way to display all those special cards we receive from family and friends throughout the season!


Thank you my dearest Jaime for letting me share some Christmas love here today! Stop on over at my place anytime, I'd LOVE to meet ya!

And enjoy some Michaels coupons for your next project scrappy happy project.