I LOVE wreaths. Absolutely love them. I love that you can find a wreath for practically any occasion/season/decor and it basically completes the look of the front of your house. Icing on the cake, if you will.
But I'm pretty picky. I won't just put up any old wreath. Ever since we bought our home two years ago, I've been on the hunt for good wreaths for the front door. But I couldn't find something that I loved for under $40--and I said I love them, but not that much!
So when I came across several DIY wreath projects on Pinterest, I knew it HAD to be my first project.
As all the neighbor kids were headed back to school, I wanted something for a preppy/back-to-school look. Thus my first Pinspiration (original PIN of someone's amazing argyle felt yarn wreath):
The tools:
Yarn in two different colors (gray and green)
Straw Wreath (leave the plastic on)
Felt in two different colors (ivory and tan)
Fabric glue
Sissors
Patience
The first step is to wrap the yarn around the wreath. On a few tutorials I saw, the ladies thought this part was annoyingly tedious. I felt like it was actually somewhat therapeutic. As I have a 9 month old baby, I was only able to work on this in short spurts after I put her down for bed and before my own bedtime. So the wrapping part actually took several days of working for 15-20 minutes, while watching episodes of Friends on Nick-at-Nite (OMG are we old or what?).
It probably would have gone much faster if I was able to dedicate a solid 45 minutes to an hour to just knock it out. The key is to not worry too much about getting the strands of yarn straight. Just wrap it until you no longer see the straw wreath underneath and then move on. I Actually went back and wrapped it again in a few places where the straw started to show through when I was all done. A few strands out of place here and there give it character, and most of the front stuff gets covered up by felt anyways.
Eventually it looked like this. (I just tied the yarn to another piece of yarn in the back to make sure it didn't unravel.)
Then probably the hardest part for me was cutting out the squares/diamonds of felt. I'm a little bit of a perfectionist and I wanted it to look good, so it took a little time until I got my free-hand cutouts to look the way I wanted to. A normal person probably would have just made a template to trace, but I like to take the long way sometimes. :) Eventually I got there and it looked like this:
Then all I had to do was glue it all down and then tie the green string around it in two different directions to finish off the argyle pattern. And there you have it--my first pinspired project, completed for about 7 bucks!
Oh yeah, I'm totally going to make more of these. In different colors for different seasons and holidays! Maybe even as gifts. Wrapping the yarn took the longest and all in all it was a pretty quick and easy project with a great return on investment. I also think I might use my glue gun next time instead of the fabric glue--the fabric glue seemed to show through a little more than I thought it would.
A little part of me feels a little bad for "copying" this exactly as the original pin, but it was my first project and I didn't want it to be a flop. As I get to feeling more and more pinspired I think I'll feel more confident to reach outside the box. And they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... so all in all I'll mark this one as a success!!
What's pinspired you lately?
Happy Pinning!
-Annie
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