Fall Wreath Making

So, a few months ago, some down-the-street neighbors were cleaning out their house and we saw a perfectly good grape vine wreath just being thrown out with the trash - we snagged it.  It has been sitting in our living room waiting to be decorated and I finally took the time to do it today!  I love fall decorating... any excuse to decorate really.  Especially for holidays.  This year, though, I'm really trying to find ways to do a lot of DIY decorating with things we already have or cheap items that can be made into something fun.  I was able to make this just by using scraps from my craft/scrap booking supply!

I had seen a really cute wreath with felt rolled flowers that I really wanted to try but since I didn't have any felt and was trying to be as thrifty as possible, I decided to try a similar idea with paper instead.  

So here's how it goes:  

To make the flowers, first cut a square of scrap-booking paper and make it into a circle.  Then make the starting point on the edge.  I forgot to take a picture of the paper flower post-swirl cutting, so here is what it looks like in burlap.  (Don't try these flowers with burlap.  It did not turn out well.  There are some really cute flowers that can be made with burlap, these are not them.)  

 Then from the loose end to the center, begin to roll pretty loosely, until the whole swirl is rolled. 

On the left is what it looks like after rolling and then releasing.  If you roll them too tight they don't fluff out like this one and then they don't really look very flowery.  I also think less is more with these flowers.  The more swirls on each flowers, the less it looks like a flowers. 

 Here are the first three flowers I did.  A 5x5  inch square will make the largest one.  Then I just  threaded some burlap through the wreath.  To attach them to the wreath I tried a lot of different methods. Many of them not seeming stable enough to really hold.  For these ones though I spiraled a paper clip and attached one end to the flower and then twisted it into the branches.  I think this is a good starting point but I later went back and added a little hot glue to ensure the hold.  I'm hoping to reuse this wreath many many times for different seasons so I used minimal hot glue for easy disassembling.  

 The green flower looks different in person than in this picture but it was made basically with the same technique. The difference for this one is you have to leave much thicker area when you cut the swirl past the first inch or so, in order to have enough height to cut the petals.  

Before putting the flowers on the wreath I finally decided  it worked better to use a hot glue gun and put glue on the top of the bottom swirl and  then press the rest of the flower into it.  It seemed to keep the whole thing from springing out when I put it on the wreath.  Also, I was going for stability so it could withstand the opening and closing of the door and hopefully winds.  

Well here's the finished product.  I hope those steps weren't too few.  It was more or less repetition and deciding where to place everything. Simon put it up with some brown ribbon we had lying around the house.  I just looped the ribbon through the wreath and tied a knot/bow at the end which we hung on a nail that we put at the very top of the inside of the door.  I like how it all turned out.  I flattened down the big green one a little more after this picture and I think it looks better that way; not so spiky.  

Happy DIY decorating!!