Fourth of July Door Decoration

Hi everyone!  No process video today.  But I do have a quick, easy and cheap Fourth of July decoration that I wanted to share with you.  I totally lost track of time and meant to post this sooner, but better late than never.  And honestly, this project is so easy and the supplies are so accessible, you can do this with very little time.

First off, here is what I made:

The supplies were very simple and I had most of them on hand.  You can buy everything for this at Wal-Mart.  I used a dowel rod, red, white and blue paint, a foam brush, some clothesline, hot glue, a nail and some Independence Day fabric.

I started off by cutting my dowel rod into three pieces.  I made mine 9 inches, 7 inches, and 5 1/2 inches.  My husband cut these using his miter saw but you could easily hand saw these.  Using a foam brush, I painted them each.  It took about two thick coats of paint.  It didn't take too long.  I let them dry and went to work on the 'wicks.'

For the wicks, I cut some pieces of clothesline, but you could use any type of smaller rope.  Or even some twine.  Using our gas stove (or you could use a lighter), my husband held the three pieces over the flame until they became blackened on the end.

By this time, the 'firecracker' pieces were dry.  I used some letter stickers that I had in my stash.  I wish I would have had some blue ones, but I made these work.  These happen to be from the Daily Flash collection by October Afternoon.  I picked the words that I wanted to put on the firecrackers and then put them on.  In hindsight, I would have chosen longer words.  I put a little mod podge on top to seal them to the firecrackers as the letters had a tendency of peeling up.  I'm not sure if this was because of the round shape, or because they didn't like sticking to paint.

Next up, use a glue gun to glue the pieces together.  Make sure the bottoms line up.  This isn't a huge deal if you're off, it just looks nicer :)  Even though the back is definitely pretty ugly, haha!

Then I just cut a small piece of fabric from my stash.  It happened to be Fourth of July themed, but you could use any pieces of red, white or blue fabric or ribbon.  I nailed mine in, by myself, which is why it is going in at an angle and sticking out so far.  But it works, and that's all that matters.  And the front looks good, nobody is ever going to know what the back looks like.  Unless they're nosy, and I can't help with that ;)

Here's the finished product again!

Like I said, this was a quick and cheap project for my Grandmother's door.  I'm already thinking of what to do for August, but we'll see if I get that done any quicker!

Also, I have a giveaway going over on YouTube that ends July 3rd, so be sure to check that out!