Every Fall I find myself looking in stores for the perfect wreath for my front door and every Fall I find myself disappointed that I can’t find exactly what I’m looking for. I usually end up spending money on something seasonal that I’m “eh” about and I secretly envy the people who have beautiful handmade wreaths adorning their equally beautiful doors. It’s usually a question of how much time I really have to spend making the perfect wreath for my door that I love for exactly 2 months. Then, I’ll get tired of it, and probably spend more money buying a storage solution for the garage where it will sit and wait for its inevitable trip to the dump one day when I’m feeling extra feisty and actually have the time and energy to clean out the garage.
I’ve seen some really beautiful yarn-wrapped foam wreaths that I’ve been admiring for some time now and this year decided that I’d give it a try. One weekend I thought I’d be able to complete a yarn-wrapped wreath during the variable time in the afternoon when the kids have their ‘quiet time.’ Ha. Sadly to say, I spent the day feverishly working to try to finish the “wrapping” which proved to be much more time consuming than I had hoped. In all, I’d say it took about 3 hours. About halfway through, I was ready to quit, but it was by sheer determination that I didn’t get the supplies for naught that kept me going. I pushed through among kids wandering around me and intermittent noise/dogs barking/kids yelling. Once I was done, I was really happy with the result but was determined to not have to yarn-wrap a wreath ever again (or at least for a couple of years).
My plan was to adorn the wreath with felt flowers (again something I’ve been admiring on sites like Pinterest and Etsy). I was originally going to hot glue them directly to the yarn-wrapped wreath (which secretly made me cringe inside because I was sure it would ruin the wreath if I ever tried to remove them). Then it hit me! I could reuse the wreath seasonally and swap out the colors, theme, etc. if I could find a way to attach the felt flowers in a way that wouldn’t damage the wreath. This is what I came up with:
Materials: A foam wreath, yarn, a hot glue gun, hot glue sticks, felt, scissors, and bobby pins.
What to do:
1. Gathering as much patience as you can muster, wrap the foam wreath with yarn. Instead of wielding the entire skein, I unraveled a section of yarn around my hand – wrapping it around about 35 times so I had a little wad of yarn I could easily maneuver through the wreath. When that piece was done, I tied a new piece to it making sure the knot was on the back.
2. Make felt flowers! We cleared out the felt section of Michael’s of every color they had to make sure we were well equipped for every season. Check out the links below for some great tutorials on felt flowers!
1. rolled felt flowers ¦ 2. felt hydrangeas ¦ 3. slanted petal rolled flowers ¦ 4. felt rosettes
3. Cut out a small circle of felt and put a bobby pin in the center of it (for bigger flowers, the length of the bobby pin can also be centered as the ends will be hidden under the petals – for smaller flowers, push the bobby pin all the way onto the circle so that only one end hangs off. This will make it easier to hide just one end under another flower).
4. Put hot glue on the bobby pinned circle and press to the bottom of a flower.
5. Slide the flowers onto the wreath by slipping the bobby pin under a few strands of yarn until it feels secure.
You can hang the wreath using some leftover yarn or a piece of twine like we did!
Enjoy your interchangeable wreath for any season by swapping out colors and mix and matching all of your different felt flowers! With so many great holidays coming up, we will be back soon with new color schemes!
Materials: Kraft paper, adhesive chipboard alphabet letters, white acrylic paint, a paint brush, scissors, mini clothes pins, and twine (the gold acrylic paint pictured was for the clothes pins, but we decided later to keep them unpainted).
We first made the garland on one long strand of twine to hang on the bar in the dining room as well as the mantle in the living room.
You can also put each word on its own piece of twine to create multiple levels!
