Gold Berry Wreath

Here's another great late fall/early Christmas wreath I made! This wreath ended up evolving to something completely different than what I had originally planned. It's amazing to me how you can come up with an idea that will seem so pretty in your head and then turns out so ugly in reality so you just keep going and going and it becomes pretty again!

I started off with my usual straw wreath. I measured around it to create four sections that I wanted to color with a different yarn. I had leftover white and gold yarn from other wreaths and thought it would look nice together.

Here is one section wrapped in the gold yarn.

Here is a picture of two sections wrapped in gold yarn with the middle wrapped in white. Note: All this hard work of different color yarn wrapping ended up not mattering as I covered it all up. Goodbye wasted afternoon!

Here is wreath is all yarned out. It looks nice! I'll have to try another wreath in the future with two kinds of yarn that will actually be displayed!

Here is the wreath with my initial plan which was to have the gold section outlined in tiny gold ornaments. I ended up not having enough ornaments for the four sections and it looked really bad so I added these gold leaves around the edged. I still wasn't a happy camper.

So I added more gold ornaments and gold leaves and then some red berries of different textures I had lying around. This was one of the last wreaths I made so it was great to use up all these extra materials. When I finally stopped adding more, more, and more, I took a step back and realized - Oh wow, this is pretty pretty! See, sometimes more IS better!! I then covered the top gold yarn section with some sparkly gold ribbon. I might have liked to put berries and leaves up there too but I didn't want to buy more and then it might have been too much.

A close up of my berries, leaves, and ornaments.

Here is it hanging nicely on the wall:

Gold Leaf Wreath

I made this wreath about a month ago. I've been saving it for the right time! I started with a plain straw wreath that I wrapped in gold yarn that had a bit of a sparkly gold glint to it.

My camera isn't all that great so you really can't see how pretty the yarn is. Here is a picture of the gold yarn (it looks more tan in reality but you can see the shine in it) compared to white yarn. Now you can see more of a difference.

I then took some gold glitter leaves I'd bought (at either Hobby Lobby or Michaels) and hot-glued some on the inside and some on the outside. I only glued along the stem part of the leaves to give the wreath an addition 3-D-ness to it.

I liked the wreath like this but thought it just needed a little more. I debated a couple days because everything I put on it seemed like it was just too much.  In the end I took some pearls I had left over from my curtain ties and glued them on.

So now we have a pretty but still simple wreath. I think this is perfect for late autumn when you're not ready to decorate for Christmas yet.

Snowflake Wreath

For the last month, I've been working hard on lots of different wreaths. I haven't shared any yet because they all have a Christmas/winter theme. Well, it snowed here this weekend so I think that gives me permission to start sharing a few!

I started off with a plain straw wreath that I wrapped (and wrapped and wrapped...it took me 2-3 hours) in white yarn until it looked like this:

I then covered the wreath with snowflake stickers I'd found at Michaels (I believe...otherwise it was Hobby Lobby). I peeled off the back of the sticker and used a hot glue gun on the sticky part just to be safe so that one day the sticker wouldn't peel off.

It needed just a little something extra so I added a plastic white glitter snowflake on top of a blue ribbon.

Here is a close up!

This is one of the first I made! I am pretty pleased :) There are MANY more to come so stay tuned (they're all different)! I'm going to try to hold off posting about them until we're further into November as much as I can but it's going to be hard because I'm so excited and I want to share!! But I've got a couple of other projects I'll be posting in the meantime.

This November, I've decided to dedicate my time (now that I've finished all my Christmas wreaths) to National Novel Writing Month, fondly known as NaNoWriMo. I've got my idea and I need to get started. Today is the first of the thirty days of November you have to write a 50,000 word novel. Hopefully it will be the kick in the bum I need to get back to writing! Wish me luck!!

Wreath Obsession

I think a monster has been created. In the last twenty-four hours, I've become obsessed with wreaths. I could hardly sleep last night because I was brain storming ideas for new wreaths and they're the first thing I thought of when I woke up. I really want to make some winter themed wreaths so I looked up some ideas online. Here are some of the favorites of what I found:

Winter Wreath from Just Between Friends

I love this one and really want to make it! There's even a tutorial if you follow the link above.

Christmas Ribbon Wreath from Calico and Cupcakes

Poinsettia Wreath from Fast Daze

I've become a huge fan of the yarn wreath with something stuck on it. I've got a lot of ideas for something like that. Let's just hope my pockets can support them!

Button Wreath photo from Craftspalooza

This was definitely on my mind during my shopping trip today and I got a lot of red and white things of different textures.

Sandwich Bag Wreath from Familyfun.com featured on The Red Chair Blog

I was completely inspired by these and went out to Hobby Lobby to start my own. Thinking the Christmas stuff (I know, I know - it's only September still!) was all on sale, I went a bit crazy only to find out at the register it was certain stuff - none of which I had bought. Oh, well! Let's hope I can sleep better tonight and not be so creative! :)