Well, I’ve been at it again. It’s been a while. Almost two years – if you’ve been with me that long, you remember the hardest, easiest Christmas DIY wreath ever:
I had moved on from THEDWE (short for the hardest, easiest DIY wreath EVER, if you didn’t know). I had finally put it out of my mind. The ornaments popping off. The hot glue madness. The wire hangers that would. not. bend.
And I lived to tell the story.
Little did I know that I’d be dealing with yet another…this time for fall.
It started innocently enough – with this pin:
Isn’t it lovely? I thought so.
I got a grapevine wreath (half off!) to try it out – and then decided at the last minute that I wanted to fill a whole foam wreath with those felty goodies.
Big mistake. HUGE.
Warning! Warning!
Danger Will Robinson!!
I know that now.
I used a foam circle I already had – I took the rose petals off this old Valentine wreath:
And then wrapped it with some scrap fabric I had:
This was just because the foam wreath was pink, and pink isn’t exactly the fall look I was going for.
I got some felt from Joann’s in some fallish colors – orange and green -- then started my felt flowers. At first I traced circles onto the felt using jars and such, but then about half way into I skipped that and just started freehanding it.
After cutting the circles, you just cut them into a “swirl,” then wrap them into little flowers:
I didn’t realize they really look nothing like my inspiration till just now. Awesome.
Mine are much looser, not as tightly rolled. I like the tight roll a lot, so someday (years from now) when I’m up for attempting this again, I’ll try it that way.
I got a little tricky with mine, by cutting some of my circles with pinking shears. It gave them a little texture which I loved. Here’s how I did them:
The are SUPER easy. You start with the inside of the swirl, then just wrap it around itself and then hot glue the “tail” to the outside of the flower. I used one tiny dab of hot glue on each one, that’s it! They held up great for the most part.
There are two different versions – if you start from the inside, you get the wider, looser flowers like mine. If you start from the outside, you get tighter rosettes:
And I just answered my own question – I bet the one on the right is what’s used in the inspiration pic above. Duh.
Anyway, I used the bigger version so they would take up more space on the wreath – you can see how much bigger they end up being.
Thank the heavens I decided to do that, cause I would have TOTALLY lost my mind if the flowers were smaller.
Cause for two days, this is all I did:
I exaggerate. Just a smidge. I did bathe, eat and play with my child.
But my goodness…it was a lot of stinkin’ crafting. I mean, I love to craft, but really.
The flowers themselves take about a minute to do each – not bad at all. The more you do it the faster they go.
It’s the volume of them that made it take forever. GAH.
Which is my fault, cause I kept going and going – I don’t like wimpy wreaths.
As I made the flowers, I just hot glued them on here and there, and filled in where needed:
Towards the end, I had a ton of scraps, so I cut up tiny circles and made smaller ones to go inside the bigger ones for some contrast:
(That color is weird on that pic, sorry about that.)
And finally, after eleventy billion hours, I had a fallish wreath:
I’m actually quite smitten with it, even with all the glue gun burns. ;)
It’s different and FUN which is just we need fun around this water-ridden house lately:
I have plans to make another fall wreath (hold me?), so we’ll see which one ends up on the front door. This one could go up on the mantel, on the back door, we’ll have to see.
I love it! And it only cost $5 in felt to make it – I used 16 sheets of felt total.
I think the time I put into it makes up for the thrifty factor. Whatever. I just keep telling myself five dollars. Five dollars…five dollars…
The porch hasn’t gotten it’s fall treatment just yet, but this is a great start! I hope to find a pretty fat ribbon to hang it from, maybe a bit lower (if this one stays on the door). For now it’s just hanging with what I had on hand:
Felt and yarn wreaths are sooo in this fall! If you try this one, maybe try it on a smaller scale, or just a few as an accent on a wreath, or just know it will take you a few months days to complete.
:)
So there. you. go – THEDWE -- the fall version…hope another two years passes before the next one. Have you made a fall wreath yet? Was it easier than mine? Wait, don’t tell me, I don’t think I could take it. It’s still too soon…
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