Parent Care Sanity

Clothes Pin wreaths are great for kids or the elderly to make. They are simple and easy and they look pretty cool. I love finding painting projects that are simple. With mom being blind it sometimes difficult to find a project that she felt comfortable with trying. She felt that without eyes she was not able to do many things, I worked hard trying to prove her wrong. With this project, I loved how I could just let her do her own thing. We were working on making Christmas presents I figure if we do little projects throughout the year it won’t be as stressful when the holiday months hit.

That also gave us a few things to choose from for gifts for birthdays and such. Giving gifts was always important to mom, she was the gift giver of our family. She would give to many gifts and spend too much money making sure our Christmas was never like the ones she had. She still wanted to give just as much but financially she just couldn’t be as generous. I think having handmade gifts from our parents is a lot better anyways. I understand Life is fragile and I want as many memories with my parents as possible. I will always have things made by mom. The same way I have a Christmas village painted by my grandma that every year I set up reminds me so much of grandma. I was so thankful that I had taken the time to work with mom on making these because now I can change the clothespins for every season. Which means that every season she gets to be part of it.

There are a few ways that you can do this. I used the painted method because the purpose of the project is to have as much of it as possible doable by mom. Spray painting and dying can also be used to color the clothespins. To dye them just use the Rit dye. Spray paint just point and shoot. We do not trust mom to point and shoot spray paint or anything really.

To start out go to the Dollarstore and load up on supplies I use about 4 packages of clothespins, one metal wreath form. I ran to Walmart to grab the paint but that can be purchased at any craft store. I am sure you can find all these supplies at Walmart or at most craft stores.

Decide on the color scheme you are going to use and pattern. I clipped them all on the frame to see how many would fit on my frame and what design I was going to do. Then separated them out so I knew how many of each color I was going to need to make. I did some Seahawks themed ones. My sisters both like the Seahawks and I figured it would be useful for longer than making a Christmas themed one. Once we figured out which ones needed to be blue and which needed to be green I set them in front of mom. I, of course, covered the area with newspaper because I had a feeling there was going to be some paint that missed the project. I used a cap from a bottle to hold the paint. This works well for little hands and for those that have some kind of impairment making it easy to get to the paint. I handed her a brush and let her go to work. I had her do one color at a time so there was no cross-contamination of colors. We have had a few painting mishaps that turned out to be more like muddy brown colored projects.

Once she finished doing what she could do, I did a little touch up to make sure they were solid colors. Setting them on a table to dry completely. Here is if you want to get really creative you can. Little decals to be stuck to the ends or something special painted on them. I wanted to make sure that the project could be done by mom as much as possible, so we decided to try and make it simple.

When they were dry. We waited overnight to make sure. Start to clip them around the frame, following the pattern you had planned on. You can add ribbon, wooden cut-outs, pom-poms, or anything else that you want. Make it your own. After that you are done you have a clothespin wreath. The great thing that I like is you can paint more clothespins and change the wreath to suit the season or holiday. Your options are really endless on what you can come up with. They make great presents and the cost of a wreath depending on the paint can be under $8 maybe even less if you get a good deal on paint.

After all, I think this project was a momma success. She was able to do an activity with little help from me. She was able to make a present that her kids will be able to keep and use for years. It was budget-friendly!