4th of July Mantle, Sort of

I had plans for an awesome 4th of July mantle to go with my front door hanger.  As I kept working, things kept falling apart and so, Voila! My "Sort of" 4th of July mantle!

I got the idea for the paper crafted fireworks from one of my favorite blogs, I Heart Nap Time.  She has a great tutorial.

Originally, I had the "fireworks" strung across the mantle but they kept swinging forward and backward.  So then I used a ridiculous amount of packing tape to keep them straight up.  But then they kept falling off the tape so I simply stuck them all around my frames and called it a day.

The Frames are from Hobby Lobby.  They were 1/2 price and usually are, so call before you go!  They're meant to be wall frames but I just leaned them against the wall and prayed for no Georgia earthquake.


I also love the Subway art from Bits of Everything.

I don't remember where I got the smaller printable but it says, "Baby, You're a Firework" on it.  I think I'll make my own for next year with a little more oomph.

I was also going to make these adorable fireworks from Amber Packer, and even started them, but got lazy and left them in my craft closet where they'll either be forgotten or resurrected as something new later...

One last thing - once you look at the paper firework tutorial, you'll notice you have to do an accordion fold.  I wanted to show you the neater way to do an accordion fold.  I don't have any fancy shmancy tools for this so I used my cheap old paper cutter and a paper creaser bone-an overpriced plastic thing with a pointed end.

I simply set my paper to the width I wanted the folds to be and creased each time.  For this one, I creased every inch.

And I ended up with this:

Which led to a very easy accordion fold!

I hope everyone has a happy 4th and stays cool!