Made It! Monday - Felt Flower Wreath

Here was the inspirational pin:

This gorgeous wreath was created by Nest of Posies. I love vibrant colors and the black and white stripes - so eye-catching!

But I love how you can take a great idea and still make it your own.

Here's how I put it together:

You'll need:

• Wreath. (I bought mine at a craft store, but then saw this idea that will only cost you $1.)
• Felt. Since this is going outside, I just used the cheap craft felt - I think they are 9" x 12"?
• Fabric - I didn't have any striped fabric, but I found this fun zebra print bandanna for $1 at Michael's.
• Scissors
• Glue Gun

 There are so many different ways to make felt flowers and if you do a quick search on google or pinterest you can easily pull of a plethora of great tutorials.

I chose to make just 2 types - pompoms and roses.

To make the pompoms:

1.  From the longest side of your felt, cut a strip 2" wide. Lay down a thin line of hot glue on the bottom edge (long side) and fold over.
2. On the folded edge, make 1/4" wide cuts all along the length of your felt strip. Cut on the fold towards the raw edge, stopping before you reach the hot glue. It doesn't need to be exact, but leave maybe 1/4" or so un-cut.
3. Then, start rolling it up from one side, securing with hot glue as you go.
4. Here's how the underside will look.

If you'd like a bigger flower, add another felt strip - just continue rolling where you left off. You could even use another color for an extra fun look.

To make the roses:

1. Cut a circle of felt. (I traced a circle using a dessert plate, about 6" in diameter, which produced a 2 - 2 1/2" rose. To make a larger or smaller rose, simply change the size of your circle.)  Cut the circle into a spiral, about 1/2" wide.
2. Starting from the outside edge, start rolling the felt. To make the rose petals, twist/fold the felt as you roll it. It's a little hard to explain in words exactly - but it truly isn't complicated, once you give it a try you'll figure it out lickety-split! Secure with hot glue as you go...
3. Here's how the underside will look with the twisting and rolling.
4. And here's the front.

For another felt flower design, roll your spiral, but don't twist it - cute!

Next, the wreath:

1.  Cut your fabric (bandanna in this case) into strips, approximately 3" wide.
2. Wrap around your wreath base, securing with hot glue here and there to hold in place.
3. Arrange your felt flowers as you like them, and attach with more hot glue (oh boy, I love that stuff!)
4. Voila!

This was sort of a two-for-one pinterest challenge, because I've been wanting to make some felt flowers forever! Turns out, they were super easy. I have a stash of nice quality wool felt in super yummy colors and can't wait to use my new skills making some fun felt flower pins, and maybe some hair clips.

But that may have to wait a bit, as I already decided what to make for this weeks challenge - it's something practical, simple, and makes a great gift....



Welcome Home Wreath

I've seen so many lovely wreaths in the blogosphere lately, and I really, really wanted one. If you look closely at the ugliness of our front door (which I cropped out as much as possible) you'll see how much we really needed a cover-up!

Here's my $4 dollar-store wreath. If you had any of this stuff on hand, you could make it even cheaper. The dollar store has these skinny, skimpy wreaths, so I bought two - one smaller and one larger and nested them together to beef it up a bit. I also bought a roll of moss-tape which I wound around the larger wreath. (I think it would have looked just as nice without though, so I could have totally saved a dollar and bought, say, another plastic organizing bin. Seriously, I need to stop buying those!)

The red flowers were also $1, attached and snuggled closely together for extra fullness. They also had a nice ivory shade of the same flower, and I think a mono-chromatic scheme would have looked really classy, but we needed the color pop.

I made the three paper flowers from my pages of my collection of old, destroyed books that I'm slowly tearing apart for various uses. I used the same book and a piece of scrapbook paper to create the mini bunting banner and paper bow. The bunting and bow are coated in mod-podge for added protection against the elements. I left the paper flowers untouched as a little weathering could only enhance the look (I hope.)

All components were assembled with hot-glue for super-duper easiness (though I burnt my finger at the VERY end, completely needlessly I might add!)

So anyway, if you've got a hankering to craft your own wreath, hope this adds to the inspiration pool...