That’s right, I just typed that. I typically am not a Halloween decorator, but I figured with a kid around I might want to hop on that bandwagon. At least a little bit. So, I started my spooky holiday decor with a DIY wreath. Most people make these bad boys with round edged wreathes, but Hobby Lobby was having their 40% off holiday sale the week I went and pickins were slim. This flat edged styrofoam wreath was all that was left. I can work with that.

To make this wreath you’ll need:

• 12 inch foam/straw/floral wreath
• yarn
• plastic wrap (if using a styrofoam wreath)
• scissors
• glue
• ribbon
• your choice of spooky decor

please don’t mind the computer in the photo. i was making the wreath while watching a live blog of the Apple iPhone event on Tuesday afternoon.

Start by tying the yarn to the wreath.

Then start wrapping your wreath all nice and neat. If you want the chunky look that’s cool too. Go wild! I just wasn’t certain if I would have enough yarn to try that style. One thing you must remember with either wrapping style is to make sure your yarn is tightly wrapped around your wreath. The last thing you want is your yarn shifting and everyone seeing your wreath’s innards. Oh my!

Being that my wreath was made of styrofoam it was a pain in the butt moving the yarn though the wreath every 5 seconds. I have read that others keep the plastic wrapping on when they use straw wreaths and after my dining room table began looking more like it had a bad case of dandruff than a beautiful wood table I brought in reinforcements. Enter Cling Wrap.

With thin pieces of Cling Wrap I wrapped the remaining portion of the wreath. It will look lumpy at first and you might question whether or not the finished product will be lumpy too, but I’m here to tell you that if you wrap your yarn tightly you will never know anything but styrofoam is under your yarn. I must say that all that plastic really helped in the mess/productivity department.

Once you’ve completely covered the wreath in your yarn tie the loose end of the yarn to the wreath to secure your work. I would hate to see all your hard work unravel. *snicker* Make sure the knot ends up on what you would like to be the back of your wreath. Then, trim your yarn about .5 inch from the knot so your wreath doesn’t end up with a tail.

See! I told you it would come out nice and smooth.

I decided to go with a couple of paper bats and a golden moon for my spooky decor. I hand drew the bats mocking after random images, I found in a google image search, on to some black scrapbook paper I already owned. I glued them to the wreath, and added a white ribbon I already owned to the top for hanging.

I used hot glue to secure my paper bats and moon in hopes that if I want I can just pop them off and add new decor one day down the line. We shall see if that works. I’m crossing my fingers and my toes on that one.

Make sure you have a few hours to spare for this little bute. All that wrapping can get tedious and time consuming. But don’t freak out too much. I was able to finish this project in one day. While the kid was sleeping of course.

Has anyone else tried making one of these? How did it turn out? Did your hand cramp as bad as mine?

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 6th, 2011 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Daily, DIY, Holidays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.