15 minute party decoration

My oldest daughter turned seven today. Seven! I can’t believe it’s been seven years since I held that tiny little bundle of a baby in my arms!

We’ve got a weekend full of birthday fun lined up and last week I dreamed up a very large list of decorations and things to make for her parties. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as planned on most days so the list quickly got pared down.

Two of my favorite things that I managed to accomplish were the fairy door that magically showed up in her room yesterday and this quick door decoration. Originally, I had envisioned making a tulle wreath and hanging a seven in the middle but I didn’t have time to get to the craft store let alone make the wreath so this is what materialized instead. 

  

Materials:

• Bag of assorted buttons (Craft stores actually sell these in case you’ve tossed the mason jar that your mother passed down to you or just want some more modern looking or color coordinated buttons.)
• Cardboard box
• Construction or scrapbook paper
• Hot glue gun
• Hole punch

Method

As I said, this was a simple last minute project so there’s really not a lot to it. I drew a 7 on a section of the cardboard box and cut it out. I traced the construction paper (pink in this case) and cut that out too. I attached it to the cardboard using hot glue which was not the best choice because it doesn’t dry flat but I was rushing and because it was going to be covered with buttons anyway it ultimately didn’t matter. I knew that the buttons wouldn’t completely cover the cardboard and I wanted a nicer background than brown so that’s why I used the construction paper. 

Next, I punched a hole in the top center so I could hang it. If you wanted to get fancy, you could totally do two holes and string some pretty ribbon to hang it from but, like I said, I had about 15 minutes to work with. 

With the hole punched, I just started randomly attaching buttons using the hot glue gun. I found that I liked the look of putting the big ones down first and then filling in around them as opposed to trying to fit buttons around each other as I went. Something about the filling in process made it look more random. 

When it was done, I pulled off all of the extra glue strings and popped it into the door! Job: done. 

This idea originally came from Pinterest (of course) and was on my Easter craft list. It got cut from there because I ran out of time (Shocker, I know!) but I’m so glad I had purchased the buttons and had them ready for this project. It turned out so cute that I have a feeling there will be a lot more button covered crafts in my future!