12 Month’s of Holiday Décor: August

July and the first third of August seem to have just flown by. Same thing happened last year. Don’t know what it is about this time of year. Anyway, so I was at girls camp for my church the last week of July, and I changed out the décor after I got home, but then Vu was off of work all last week and I always seem to get so much less done when Vu is at home… so I never got around to posting it.

I have had the theme for the August decorations planned pretty much since the end of last August. And I have explained this chosen theme to Vu numerous times since then. But each time I bring it up again he asks every single time “now what do peacocks have to do with August?” And the answer. Absolutely nothing. So how did I land on it? Last year when I made the Magnetic holiday board I was faced with the question of what to use to represent August. When I thought about it, to me August meant the peak of summer, the heat, the vacations, beaches, pools, blue skies and bright sun, and barbecues. Then in my mind the color that represented these things was turquoise. So I painted the wooden magnets turquoise.

Well from there I decided I wanted to add gold because I had recently started to love gold, when up to this point I have pretty much hated gold my whole life, and it added to the whole sun and sand idea. So I had a color scheme. Turquoise and gold. I also happened to have a few random décor items (like this wood herringbone board) that were turquoise and I wanted to incorporate them into one month somewhere and August felt like the best month for it. This is pretty much the extent of the association. Because from there I started to see peacock stuff everywhere and started to love the idea and since the colors I often saw with it were gold and turquoise, and since I don’t really have an everyday décor theme going on, for which I could use peacock, August then became turquoise and gold with hints of peacock. And there you have it. You can think of it as my non holiday décor, it just happens to only stay out for one month. Along the way as I started to collect and make things for it, I also decided to add in some geometric items as well, because they are everywhere and often in gold, and I really like it too.

I found these metal tear drop gold jewelry things in the clearance section at Hobby Lobby and since I have often seen the peacock feather made in this shape, I sort of settled on using the tear drop a lot to represent them.

And obviously I have a little obsession with wood/nail/string boards as well as anything ombre, because I wanted to make another board, reminiscent of the peacock feather, using ombre shades of turquoise layered over each other. And I still love this herringbone wood board and was really happy to be able to use it here.

This rhinestone board took my forever. After I cut, painted and glued the layered wood pieces together, I glued every single one of those tiny rhinestones on it. The yellow/gold ones are super tiny, 3mm. I tried out a few different rhinestones from Joann’s to figure out the design I wanted, and then because they didn’t have the quantity that I needed I bought more on Amazon. And not paying attention, I accidentally ordered the yellow ones from a seller in China, which took one whole month to get here. Then when they did get here, their color was nothing like the one they advertised, it was an ugly beige-ish color that I hated. So I went back to Joann’s and grabbed every package they had, which got me about half way through the whole thing. Then for weeks after that I kept going back to Joann’s buying everything they had in stock, and it still took me 4 times to get all that I needed. And that didn’t include the times I went and they hadn’t restocked yet. Or the ones I tried to order from Joann’s online and accidentally ordered the wrong size. It’s a good thing I started this months in advance. Also, it took me some time to figure out the technique to get the shape I wanted with the glue, so you can tell I started down at the bottom, the shape definitely gets much better going up to the top. Oh well.

The gold wire circle “wreath” was actually the last thing that I made. After I had everything out, I felt like the space above the mantle was too empty, and Vu agreed. I had this extra gold wire and so using 6 different sized spherical bottles and vases, I wrapped some 18 gauge wire around them about 5 times with the two ends overlapping each other about an inch, then used a small piece of 24 gauge wire to wrap around all the layers to hold them together. Then wrapped the opposite side of the circle with the 24 gauge to keep them together. Once I made all of the circles I used the 24 gauge again to hold them together. And used some turquoise leather cording I found on clearance to hang it from.

The garland was also one of the earliest projects. I bought a huge bag of plain wood beads from Amazon, then painted them in gold and a light and dark turquoise, which also took quite a bit of time… Then I strung each color on a piece of twine and twisted the three strands together. I love the way this looks, it is one of my favorites.

I made another embroidery, and I honestly thought it wasn’t going to turn out, but was actually very happy with the result. I thought it came out much better than I had imagined. Much better than the embroidery I made for February. I found a double frame from Michael’s or Hobby Lobby, can’t remember which one, and painted the bottom part turquoise and the inside top part gold, to hold the embroidery.

I found this metal triangle star accent at Hobby Lobby and loved it. Then grabbed a couple of gold and turquoise books from my bookshelves to add underneath the pictures. The turquoise mason jar I found at an antique store and filled with some gold metal filler balls from Michael’s.

The beaded wire peacock feather was inspired by this picture I found on Pinterest, but since the website is all in Russian or something, I had no idea if they were selling it of what, so I just used the picture as a guide to make my own. I love how this came out too. Sometimes I never know if my project is going to come out how I envisioned it, or if I will completely hate it. It’s always nice when it works out.

I made one pillow case cover from this hexagon gold fabric I found on Hawthorne Threads.

On the coffee table I filled some of the small square vases with different turquoise filler balls, and placed them on a plastic gold plate. I like that they form a triangle in the center, adding to the geometric patterns.

I made another gold wire and bead peacock for the piano, using flat wire to form the base and then creating feathers similar to the first one to fit inside each section. I originally tried a different technique for the beads, and really hated it. I only did one section and debated scraping the whole thing before I tried this way, which I was so much happier with. I bought all of the wire and half of the beads at Shipwreck beads in Olympia. I love that store so much, it’s amazing and HUGE.

This gold beaded table runner is from Pier 1 and was actually the catalyst for the peacock theme, despite it not having anything peacock about it. They had it on their display table and everything else on the table was peacock themed, but it was just this that I really wanted. The cake plates are also from Pier 1. The turquoise table runner is one of those projects that the result was worse than the vision. I really don’t like how it turned out, so next year I am going to do something different. I finished it the day after I put everything else out and by then it was too late to change it. I was going to make a second pillow case with the same design, but since it didn’t turn out how I wanted it to, I decided against it and will make the pillow next year when I figure what to do about the runner.