A couple years ago we were given horseshoes as a wedding favor. At the time I had no idea where I would use them as my decor style is not very western. But I didn’t want to throw them away either so I stored them away and I figured some day I would figure out where they would fit in. Then when I saw all the lace that I inherited from my Grandma’s sewing stash recently I knew exactly what I would do. And so these shabby chic horseshoe hangers were born. On the plus side with Valentine’s Day and Spring coming up it seemed like the perfect new decor piece. Plus lately I have been obsessed with making felt flowers. I found multiple tutorials via Pinterest and in the end just kind of winged it on my own. But my favorites for inspiration are from themagiconions.com and agirlandagluegun.com.
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Materials Needed:
- Horseshoes, either used ones or craft ones
- Spray Paint (I used NOW Spray Paint in Aluminum)
- Felt sheets in varying colors
- Lace of different colors and sizes of your choice
- Hot glue gun
- Wire for hanging (mine was around 20 gauge)
- Scissors
Step 1:
The horseshoes were rusty and worn since they had actually been on a horse at some point. I updated them with a little spray paint in metallic silver.
Step 2:
I used pink, white, green (for leaves) and blue felt sheets. The majority of tutorials I read used wool felt sheets but I just used the polyester felt sheets found at most craft stores. Your flower size will depend on the size of your horseshoes. One of mine was larger than then other and I didn’t want the flowers too large and crowd out the horseshoe.
Most of the tutorials advise using a hot glue gun with a low heat setting. Mine doesn’t have that so I don’t feel it is absolutely necessary but I did burn my fingers slightly a couple times! Once I had my flowers and leaves made I played around with placement of the flowers and lace before actually gluing them on. For the pink one I liked the off center placement and added the leaves. I changed it up on the blue one and added no leaves and centered the flowers.
Step 3:
Next up would be to add the lace, I used thin lace strips in white an pink and applied a small amount of hot glue to the front and back and pressed the lace into place. I did wrap it around once on the pink so that you can’t see the horseshoe through it. This didn’t matter much with the blue since I placed the flowers on top of the lace. I cut the lace ends at varying lengths at the end to create the shabby and un-uniformed look.
Step 4:
I found this wire in my craft stash but any heavy duty wire should work. I found the easiest way to make the hanger was to make a circle and glue it to the entire horseshoe. I then used some pliers to wrap the wire around itself at the top where it would hang from. As you can tell from the pictures I added the wire on the pink before the lace and on the blue after. It could be done either way.
And there you have it! A couple of beautiful new pieces of decor that are relatively inexpensive and easy to assemble. I have the pink one hanging in our kitchen and the blue one in my office and they both make me smile every time I see them.
