Monday, October 8, 2012

DIY Fall Wreath

It's starting to feel a lot like fall around here.  The temps have dropped and the leaves are falling.  The days are already shorter, it's pitch black outside when I get up at 5:00 now.  But that's okay, as much as I love summer, I might love autumn more.  I love sweaters, and boots, and bonfires.  All good things

I've started adding little bits of fall decoration all around the house.  A little here and a little there.  I love the warm colors of fall.

I also picked up some stuff to make a new wreath for our front door.  Now, I never thought I would be a wreath person.  But since we bought the house, I'm loving decorating the front door.  Maybe it makes me forget about how ugly the storm door is (it's coming down soon).


So here is what I created for fall.  Nothing that really reinvents the wreath, but still a nice little touch for fall.

So what did I do?  First I picked up a wreath from the thrift store.  This is a great place to find wreaths, they always seem to have some.  I recommend looking there before shelling out the dough at the craft store.


I painted the wreath with an ivory spray paint.  I won't show you how to spray paint, since I feel most of you already know how to do that ;-)


I then grabbed some small flowers from Micheal's.  These are from there dollar section.  They normally have a small little section of smaller flowers that are between $1.00-$1.50, and they normally come in bunches of three.  They are perfect for something like this.  You can also check out thrift stores.  One I like to go to always has silk flowers.


I just stuck the flowers in the wreath where I saw fit to stick them.  I didn't use any wire to hold them down because they were pretty secure by just weaving the ends through the wreath, but if you wreath is different, you may need to wire of glue them in.

I picked up the little gourds from the Dollar Store.  They came in little packs of five foam gourds and were perfect size for this.


I punched a hole in them using one of my very, very long needles.  I discovered later that I didn't need to do this because the wire I was using was strong enough to poke through the little gourds.


Then I just threaded wire through the gourd.  I normally use a lot lighter gauge wire then this, but I used a heavier gauge this time because I had some left over from a different project.  It worked just fine.  So you can use what ever you have.

I also thought about hot gluing the gourds in place because they are so light, but I wasn't sure how well this would hold up.  I might try gluing one on and see if it hold up as well as the ones wired on.  Just as an experiment.


I then wire the little guys on the wreath were  I felt the looked the best.  I'm sure there are professional wreath makers out there just appalled by my attempt, but I like it.  It's simple and feels like fall.

   
I think it looks pretty good.  I only added three little gourds, because I didn't want to over do it, but now I'm thinking about adding a few more.  I'm letting the current one settle and see how I feel in a week or so.  Then I'll decide if I need to change it up.

I also decided to not paint the gourds.  I bought paint to paint them lovely fall colors, but I decided to just go with their original color.  Again, we'll see how I feel about them in about a week.  I might change my mind.

How have you been bringing fall into your home?  Or are you avoiding the fact that summer is over and fall is here?  :-)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How cool! I love how it turned out:)

Rose Clearfield said...

Your wreath is beautiful! Simple and effective. Now that we own a house and there a billion great wreath ideas on Pinterest, I may get inspired to work one up sometime.