Happy Spring! Well, meteorlogical spring I supppose. Here in Chicago we're still experiencing winter weather alternating with spring rain. Spring break was this week and we had ONE day where we could get out and do something. Despite the weather Easter is this weekend and our homes and yards are just begging for some color. We are pretty obsessed with decorating for the different holidays/seasons but admitedly have way more fall (our favorite season) inspired items than any other season. I wanted to change that this year but since I'm cheap frugal I had to find a way to do it on a budget. Years ago I bought this 'grapevine' wreath and I have often wrapped it with various faux flowers and vines for fall and Valentines. Last fall I added a wooden letter for a personal touch.
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| My fall wreath with autum vines and our "L" attached to the wreath with fishing line. |
This year how ever I decided to up the ante a bit. We have four, FOUR doors to our home and we see three of them every day. So I decided to dress them up a bit. This project is super fast, super inexpensive and easy to remove and pack away so you can reuse the wreath for other seasons/holidays.
What you'll need:
- Wreath - I like the grapevine ones. I had one and bought two extra. These are the 18" size and are regulary priced at $5.99 but I got them on sale at JoAnn's this week for just over $3 a piece.
- Ribbon - Any kind of ribbon you'd like. I bought this ribbon at JoAnn's for $3.99 a spool (5yds). Make note that if you use transparent like I did you may need more to cover the ends of your floral arrangments.
- Silk Flowers - I bought two sets of ferns (greens), two sets of the purple lilies, and two of the yellow hydrangieas all at the dollar store. So $6 total for the flowers for three wreaths. If you wanted more flowers it's pretty inexpensive to add more if you shop at your local dollar store. Otherwise your local craft store will have ample options but at slightly higher prices.
- Wooden Letter(s) - I had this one on hand from last year but you can buy all sorts of shapes and sizes of these again at your local craft store or even from Amazon.
- Saftey Pins
- Hot Glue Gun and Glue Sticks
If you're only making one wreath you can just get started, but if you're making a few arrangements you'll want to break up your supplies. I counted how many stems I had on each silk flower bunch and decided to cut my stems apart so I could split up the two groups into three arrangments. These silk flowers almost always have wire in them so make sure to use wire cutters and not scissors.
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| Using wire cutters makes this part a breeze! |
Once you've cut everything apart you can arrange the flowers into new piles and get an idea of how you want your arrangement to look.
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| Everything cut apart and separated into piles for each wreath. |
Now, if I am being honest I actually prefer to sew or use wire to connect things like this, but I was short on time and since the connection point will be covered by ribbon I went ahead and used hot glue. Becareful though as you can melt your greenery depending on what materials it is made from and be careful to not burn yourself. I'm a veteran at this and still managed to flake out and give myself a healthy sized burn blister on my thumb!
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| Growing up my Mom always used this tool when hot glueing, it's acutally a Tupperware orange peeler but I use it all the time crafting, from help with using glue to poking out the corners on turned seams! |
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| My first bunch for wreath #1 |
I got smart after the first wreath...see glueing each stem down was kind of a pain so for the remaining two wreaths I took the longest stem of each flower and wrapped it tighly around the rest of the flowers creating one, thicker stem for me to glue down. Worked great!
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| Getting smart and making one stem to glue down. The greens still needed to be glued one at a time. |
After your floral bunches are all glued and dried it's time to attach them to the wreath. I like to make this as easy as possible to remove at the end of the season so I can reuse the wreath (then I don't have to store 15 different wreaths throughout the year, just a bag of decorations!). I fold over the ribbon at least once to strengthen it a bit and attach the end with a safety pin to the wreath.
Then I turn the wreath over, place the floral arrangement on the wreath and begin wrapping the ribbon around the bottom of the flower bunch and the wreath as snuggly as possible. I find it helps to position the wreath on the edge of a table so you can easily wrap the ribbon around and thru.
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| See the little 'hole' I left between the wreath and the table? That makes is super easy to wrap your wreath while keeping it snug and not crushing your flower arrangement. |
Once you've wrapped the ends of the stems it's up to you if you want to keep going...you can wrap as little or as much as you want! When you come to the end of your wrapping fold over the end of the ribbon again, wrap to the back of the wreath and attach again with a safety pin.
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| Both ribbon ends attached to the wreath with safety pins. |
Now is the time to add any other features. If you're using an intial you can attach that now. I use fishing line to attach mine and I attach it to my wreath for every season! I only have one letter "L" currently so I opted to put it on the wreath that will go on our garage door as we see that from our kitchen and we use that door regulary. I will probably grab two more "L's" the next time Michaels or JoAnn's has them on sale though because I think it make the wreath look more complete.
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| My finished wreath! I love the pop of color, and how easy they were to make initially and how easy they will be to change and store at the end of the season. |
I have a few more "pops" of color to add to the exterior of our home in the coming week, but seeing these wreaths already brightens up the house in this dreary midwest "spring" weather.
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| Love it!!! |
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| How can you not smile when you see this! |
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| One of the wreaths sans "L". This greets us as we enter our home from our garage. Its twin is on our front door. |
I also did one quick sewing project. Rememebr those hearts from last week? I cut some of the rainbow colorway and made myself another M4M Mama Claire. I know... and I promise I will move onto a new pattern but this fabric was screaming to be made it into one! This is my fourth one and I just don't like how it gaps/droops in the front. I think the problem is that I am smaller on top than toward the bottom and probably would benefit from grading the pattern between the two sizes my measurment fall into. Grading is exactly like it sounds, you take the sizes of the pattern that fit your measurement and you literally redraw the pattern between those areas so they fit. If I end up doing that I will document the process so you all can see what I mean. In the meanwhile I think I will sew down the cross over like I did on my
green version in week four so I am not constantly fixing and flattening the top part.
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| I do love this print and I have several yards left over!! |
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