I Have a Confession...

I have a wreath obsession. I think it stems from my maternal grandmother whose door has never been without a wreath and who uses them in the most unusual places... like the bathroom. Nevertheless, I feel like my front door is missing something if it ever happens to be without a wreath. It's a curse, really. Occasionally, I'd like to look out the door without having to look through a wreath. Yet, the wreath compulsion always wins. I love more than just having a wreath and looking at a wreath. I love making wreaths. With the holidays, I've recently made two (and a half) wreaths that I thought I'd share.

Because I like chronology, I'll share the Fall wreaths first, though I know the last wreath is more current. I love Fall, so I made my Fall wreath really early in the season. It was really more like late summer. So, I didn't want much of a Autumn-y feel quite yet. The inspiration came from Lindsay at what is now Makely School for Girls with her tutorial for this wreath.

However, I didn't really follow her instructions much. I decided I didn't really need my wreath quite that full, so I bought just one plain grapevine wreath at a local outlet store, Old Time Pottery. I also bought some late summery silk flowers to match some ribbon I found at Hobby Lobby and used a wooden initial that I also found at Hobby Lobby.

I simply laid the "S" on top of the wreath, while I cut apart the flower bushes and began poking flower stems into the grapevine here and there where I wanted my flowers. Nothing is glued onto the wreath so that I could reuse it later. Once I was satisfied with the look (and it had stopped hailing), I looped the ribbon through both the "S" and the wreath and secured the ribbon to the TOP of the door (as in the part touching the door frame, not the top of the front of the door) with my staple gun.

I loved the idea of not gluing anything to the wreath so that I could reuse it later, so my original plan was to use purple flowers for late summer and to replace the purple with Fall leaves and such. However, I just loved the purple so much that I couldn't bear to take it down. So, I just added a few Fall leaves and three floral pumpkins I found at Hobby Lobby. The pumpkins were great because that had a stem attached to the bottom of them so that they could be stuck into arrangements with ease. So again, there was no gluing, just a lot of poking stems into the grapevine.

I honestly love it both ways. I love the early version with the grapevine showing in places, but I also love the fuller version. Mostly, I love that it changed with the ripening of the season and was easy to make fresh without changing entirely.

Sadly, the time for Fall wreaths has come to a close. But that means Christmas/Holiday/Winter wreaths! I'm so excited to make another wreath! I considered continuing with the grapevine base, but this wreath I saw via Pinterest caught my eye. I have always LOVED snowflakes in Christmas decoration and thought how simple this would be. I found a box of large snowflake ornaments at Hobby Lobby (for half price!). You could use any size or color of snowflakes, really, as long as you have enough. I just laid out the snowflakes overlapping in a circle and began hot gluing them to one another. I glued each snowflake in several places for added support. I did have my doubts about needing something to glue the snowflakes onto for support, but they were unfounded. The snowflakes seem to be doing just fined simply attached to each other. I then layered more snowflakes on top of my original circle and continued hot gluing until I was satisfied with the look.

This was during the brainstorming phase, with my helpful kitten putting in her two cents.

 
 I then took some red ribbon that I had left over from last Christmas, looped it through the wreath, and stapled it to the top of the door. Once it was up, it looked a little too simple. So, I had a pre-made red bow from the Dollar tree in with my Christmas decorations. I just hot glued the bow to the ribbon used to hang the wreath (not to the wreath itself). The tails of the bow were a little long for my liking, so I just trimmed them a little. I love the way it turned out!

This was so much fun to make, and SO simple! I love that it isn't too Christmas-y to leave up for a while into the New Year... or until the itch to make another wreath strikes again! Stay tuned...