Summer Wreaths

Wreaths have never intrigued me… until I moved here. Wreaths are the unspoken beauty symbol in our neighborhood — and for years, I’ve caught myself taking different routes when I run errands, just to see what new wreaths pop up as the season/holidays change.

Wreaths are expensive… and I’ve noticed that all the good ones are “sold out” before I’ve even had a chance to snag one. Except for this gorgeous feathery-wreath I found at Halloween one year.

This wreath is my claim to “wreath fame”. No one has it in our neighborhood — which is a good thing, because  I can’t really, “copy” everyone in the neighborhood.

Now that I’ve found the wreath page on Pinterest, a whole new world has opened up for me. Sorry — but it came as a big surprise to me that wreaths can be made for very little effort… using stuff you have around your house that you acutally love — which truly gives your wreath the “spirit” I’m looking for.

Here are my first two wreath-making attemps — and because I was at the lake… I did it without a glue gun. Imagine that — I used real school glue.

The first was a simple burlap ruffle wreath, dime store flags that were sitting in a bucket, going unnoticed. My son emblesshed with key tags that say, “Merry Summer.” His idea.

The wreath form was a 5 cent garage sale wreath covered in gold tinsel… it was the ugliest thing  any of us had ever seen.

I simply wrapped the entire gaudy thing in burlap, left over from the curtains, (and these, and these) and then cut a few more 4 inch-wide strips of burlap. Then, I pulled a thread through the burlap (it has lots of loose strings) to make a ruffle…

then I glued each ruffle on, over and over again. OK… so I like wreaths… I enjoyed doing this.

The second wreath involved using an old pair of jeans and burlap a covered with a coat of red spray paint. I used a “lame” Christmas wreath I had — which I thought, in my pre-Pinterest days, was cool, that was covered in red beads. I simply made more ruffles of the strips of denim and burlap, and this time, wrapped them into a circle,

adding a vintage button from Grandma’s button collection on top.

A red burlap circle, on top of a denim burlap circle, or a jeans pocket. I can’t tell you how much I loved using up some of the stuff in my mom’s sewing collection. Because, why save stuff if you aren’t using it, right? And I just can’t justify throwing this stuff away.

 

, , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *