My Crafting Ensures I'm Forever Single

Because we know that my crafting brings no boys to the yard, I thought I would share with you my recent endeavors into ensuring that I was forever single. But first, let me tell you how this craft project came to be. One day I was sitting at home and minding my own business (I'd like to take a minute to point out that I always say I'm minding my own business, but it's usually not true. I'm usually minding my cat's business.) when I got an email from one of the craft sites I subscribe to. The email featured 31 fall wreaths to craft. As my mom and I got to talking, we realized we had no fall wreath. As I got to going through the email, I realized they didn't have any awesome fall wreaths either. An idea was born.

I had a wreath lying around and decided that I would make a much more awesome wreath all on my own, without their ideas. I also didn't have a lot of money to do it, so I went out bargain shopping at the Dollar Store and hoped an idea came to my mind. Before I went, I had gone through my crafting supplies and saw a few things for a Halloween wreath, so I thought I'd make one of them, too. The shopping trip was a success, and the following came from it.

First up, we have the fall wreath. For this wreath, I wanted something classy that was truly one of a kind, but had a bit of sparkle to it. I started out with a 9 inch wreath we already had, but normally only cost a few dollars, exactly like the one pictured below.

At the dollar store, I bought some beautiful ribbon and a string of glittered fall leaf garland. I already had some little pine cones that I had picked up for free out of boredom while waiting for my mom to get off the phone one day while we were at a butterfly release. My plan was to cover the wreath in the ribbon, but not overlap it. I would then take and fill in the spaces where the wreath stuck out with the leaves and place the pine cones over top.

Since the ribbon was the good kind with wire through the edges, it made it difficult to wrap the ribbon, as a whole, around the wreath to cover it. As a solution, I cut the ribbon into six five inch strips. I flipped the wreath upside down, put the middle of the ribbon around the part facing the table, and then put hot glue at one end of the ribbon and brought the other up to meet it. I also burned myself with the hot glue gun approximately 972 times because I had to push the ribbon against itself to make it stick, and the hot glue came through. I put each individual piece of ribbon up against each other in the center of the wreath, and left room at the bottom for the focal point.

I then cut a few of the leaves from the garland, which are sparkly, though it's hard to see, and positioned them over the gaps between the ribbon. I overlapped two leaves per gap, sometimes three if I was doing the overlapping on the outside of the wreath. To balance it all out and bring a bit of depth to the color, I took the baby pine cones and placed them over top of the leaves to get this effect.

At the bottom of the wreath, the part where I had not put any of the above things, I started on the focal point. This is a view from the inside out the wreath out.

And this is the head on view. What I did was take three big flowers from the Dollar Store and line them up side by side, cutting their stems to a half an inch and lathering them with hot glue to make sure they stayed, before sticking them into the wreath. To balance it out, I took some smaller flowers from the dollar store of a darker shade and lined the inside and the outside of the wreath just around the three flowers for balance. Because the flowers were from the Dollar Store, the centers of them were nothing to write home about, so I hot glued pine cones into the center to tie together the rest of the wreath.

This was the end product, and it only cost me a total of $4. Had I had to buy the wreath, it would have cost more like $7, but I still think that's a good price considering how much you would pay for an already finished, thousands-made wreath.

Up next was my Halloween wreath. I wanted this wreath to be a little more fun and not as busy. I bought the Dollar Store version of this wreath in a 9 inch, so it wasn't near as nice or as fancy, but that was okay, because it was just the base that I would be covering.

I spent around two hours hot gluing moss onto the wreath and burning my fingers. It wasn't as hard to do as one would think. The moss went right on. When I got the first layer done, I shook the wreath and pulled off the pieces that weren't glued on, and then repeated the process a second and third time. I love how it came out and it was totally worth it, though I do warn that this makes a heck of a mess. After doing that, I took one of the Halloween items I had found and glued it onto the left side of the wreath like so.

I then went to the right side and glued another little kitten I had lying around onto the wreath directly across from the Boo kitty above.



I also had a little witch's broom lying around, so I positioned it right in between where I knew my ribbon would fall, so when the ribbon fell, it looked like this.

One thing that was a must have with this wreath was a really awesome, slightly over-sized ribbon on the top. I got one at the Dollar Store that matched my kitties perfectly, and then tied it and hot glued it on. I wasn't happy with how the center knot looked, so I took a black button and hot glued it to the center of the ribbon, and then glued an orange one in the middle of it to give it flair.

To balance out the large ribbon, I bought a sign at the Dollar Store that went with the theme of the wreath and attached it to the back of the wreath and hung it from the wreath, having the ribbon just skim the top of it so that it all tied in together. The end result was as follows. This wreath also cost $4 for everything you see, aside from the kitties and the broom, but including the sign.

I wish these pictures made them look at cute as they are in real life. I look at the pictures and wonder if I enjoy how they came out, but when I actually look at the wreaths, I love them. I guess maybe it's one of those things where if you make it, you always see the flaws.