Fall Wreaths

For Halloween i made a simple, small wreath. I bought a spool of tulle in black at Walmart for under $3. I used a green foam wreath- the one you use with artificial flowers, because I couldn't find a small enough styrofoam one. I have 3 mini pumpkins underneath where it hangs, and I thought a big one would look a little funny. I bought a bag of Halloween snakes, spiders, rings, mice for $2 at Big Lots, and put them together to make this little beauty:

Unfortunately hot glue and the spiders didn't mix. I shoved a pin through each of the spiders bodies, in the black part and used a sharpie to black out the head of the pin. I am just nit picky like that, you honestly couldn't see it when it was hung up on the wall. I of course knew it was there and it irked me to no end :)

 

For the rest of the Fall/Thanksgiving season, I found a GREAT tutorial from Six Sisters' Stuff . The only thing I did differently was use some scrap fabric instead of felt for the ruffle. I absolutely LOVE this one, and will be sure to keep it for next year. Since making wreaths I have a tendency to try a new one every year lol :)

 

My first ribbon wreath

I've seen ribbon wreaths being made everywhere and decided to try my hand at one for Christmas. I know it's early, but if I waited until October or November to do it, I wouldn't be able to find all the supplies I wanted (that is what happened last year)

Supplies:
Ribbon- lots!
Foam wreath- I used one that had a flat top.
Glue gun!
Time- including my mishaps it took me about 10 hours.

First off, I had problems figuring out how much ribbon I needed. I ended up with 130 feet of ribbon, and I cut them into 4.5" strips. I googled and found many, many tutorials and very few specify amount of ribbon needed, because it really all depends on the width of your ribbon, and how full you want your wreath.

I spent hours with the hot glue gun getting all the loops glued. Learn from my mistakes, when you glue a loop you need to leave a little bit of room at the end of the loop to fold out the ribbon, and glue it onto the wreath like this:

 



I only made sure of this with the first half of the loops. Then I got lazy, and thought it wouldn't REALLY matter. It does. It is almost impossible to get it hot glued onto the wreath and look "uniform". If you have to glue from one side or the other you end up with loops that aren't as tall as the rest, or it is pushing down the other loops on the wreath. I had to go and pull apart all my loops and reglue. Not fun.

 

Now, I haven't decided what I really want to do with the rest of my wreath. That 130 feet of ribbon is all there..on the top side of my wreath. I prewrapped my wreath with a dark green polkadot ribbon, so the inside, top and back are all covered. If I would have used wider ribbon I'm sure this wouldn't have been a problem. I wanted to get some of the same ribbons and do the outside of the ring, but it will cost me a small fortune, again :)

 

I've seen a few of these done with pins, rather than hot glue, but I prefer to burn my fingertips off, not poke them :)

 

*Another tip, when you get to the end of your ribbon reel, it's attached to the cardboard spool by tape. SAVE IT. stick the tape onto a piece of cardboard in case you need to get more later, and you don't have to haul the whole wreath to the store.

 

I have a few months to go to decide what to add to it, this wreath is for above my fireplace. If I make any changes to it, I'll let you know.