New Year's Mantel

Happy New Year! 

Not quite at my house.  I still have 3 1/2 hours left of 2012.  

What are you doing this New Years Eve?  I'm sitting at home writing my blog post and watching New Year's Rockin' Eve Celebrates Dick Clark on TV.  So exciting.  I don't know if I can handle so much excitement at my age.  

I'd rather be at a fun party, or having a fun party at my house.  But lack of funds means I get to stay home and play on the computer.  

But having all this time on my hands gave me time to change up my mantel for New Year's.

I went with a chalkboard and clock theme.  

I'm having to take photos with my cell phone camera so they are not the best.  I really need to figure out how to use my SLR in manual.  I can take great photos outside during the day.  But inside I suck at taking photos with it.  

I decided to make a couple of party hats for the occasion.  I actually bought some cheapo ones from Dollar Tree.  I took one apart & used it as a template for making my own.  I just found some music online and printed it out on card stock.  The music is actually Auld Lang Syne.   

I hot glued some silver tinsel along the bottom and balled some tinsel up for the top.  The tinsel came from Dollar Tree in the gift wrapping department.  I've had it for a year or so.  

I found the clock print at The Graphics Fairy.   I was going to glitter the edges, but couldn't find my gold glitter.  Or any glitter.  So I left it plain.  

Here is the 2nd party hat I hade.  This one I used a French letter I found online. 

I love this chalkboard print.  It is a free printable from The 36th Avenue.  I love how it looks like a real chalkboard, without all the work.

All of my clock prints came from The Graphics Fairy.  I did add "Happy New Year" to a few of them.

I made the "Welcome" banner with free printable letters from Allsorts. 

I did make a chalkboard out of a Dollar Tree cheapo silver tray.  I sprayed the entire front with chalkboard paint.  I used chalk to highlight the raised edges.  I wrote "2013" on the tray.  I used a small command hook (another Dollar Tree find) on the back to hang it on the chicken wire on my frame.

I also made this chalkboard.  But I made it from black foam core from Dollar Tree.  I cut it out to fit my thrift store frame & placed the cut foam core in the frame.   I hand wrote the "Happy New Year, etc".  I copied a free printable you can get over at Sweet C's Designs.  Normally I would just print out the free printable but I needed a much larger copy.  So I had to free hand it.  I could have enlarged & copied it, but that involved too much work.  I decided just to free hand it.  Turned out pretty good. 

The countdown numbers are from The 36th Avenue as well. 

The last thing I made was this "Happy New Year" banner.  I used another version of "Auld Lang Syne" sheet music for the background & added the typewriter letters in Picasa.  Cut everything out & pinned each letter to some twine.  

And there you have my New Year's mantel for 2013.  I hope you enjoyed.  

Now I better get back to watching TV.  I still have 3 hours before the ball drops and I can have my glass of Martinelli's sparkling cider with my family. 

Happy New Year's Everyone!  I hope 2013 is much better than 2012.  But since we are falling off the fiscal cliff, I highly doubt it.  Yikes!

Kim