Cheap but Chic Gift…DIY

I got the idea for this HERE, but I’m going to share how I did it because I did alter her design quite a bit to fit my own needs.  So, first of all, let’s start at the beginning.  I was invited to go to Girl’s Weekend last year.  Girl’s Weekend is a bunch of girls that get together and head to this wonderful woman’s house J in New Mexico at Lake Conchas.  There is quite a diverse group of people that go too.  I’m not sure how many years they’ve been doing this but I was invited for the first time last year along with my oldest daughter.  The woman who’s house it is has a daughter that is the same age as Brandi Bells and they went to school together.  So, yeah, they’ve known each other since Kindergarten which means I’ve known J all that time too.  So, the women that go are my age and my daughter’s age as well…just a great group of women actually.  We all head down there with 2 rules…No Men, No Makeup!  The rest of the weekend is just a lazy beer drinking, boating, floating, free for all.  We all sign up to bring food items so we eat great, have a great time and just hang out.  Well, this year I wanted to do something nice for everyone and decided to do this:

We always take a group photo and I thought it would be super cute to have this cute little picture hanger to display our photo for the year.  I decided against putting the year on it also so we could re-use it every year with the new year’s picture.  So, this is how I did it…

I bought the basic pieces at Hobby Lobby in the unpainted wood section. 

First I glued the candle stick piece down to the base just using the Gorilla Wood Glue.

Once that was done, my hubby took the 6’ 1”X6'” boards I bought at Lowes and cut them into 7” pieces.  Then he cut the dowel rod to fit the hole in the candle stick into 1”-2” pieces.

I marked holes on both sides of the boards and my hubby drilled holes in both sides.  They were different sized holes because the finial had a different size than the candle stick.  Once the holes were drilled, I sanded the boards fairly well so there were no rough edges.  Then I put glue in each of the candle holders and inserted one of the pieces of the dowel rods.

Then I put glue in the hole in the board and set it on top of the dowel rod.  I put glue in the top hole then and set the finial into place.  Then I just let them dry over night.

Next, I just spray painted them with Heirloom White spray paint and let them dry again.  Once that was done I set each one on it’s side and glued a spring clip to the center of each one using E6000 glue.

Now at this point they are basically done.  But, I wanted to bedazzle them a little so I got some stick on letters from Hobby Lobby and put “Girls Weekend” on them.  I chose all different colors of stickers and just let the ladies choose whichever one they wanted.  I think they all loved them!  Here is the final outcome one more time.  Overall, it was really inexpensive, really super easy, not time consuming but stinking cute at the same time!