Three years ago when we bought this house I loved these huge double entry doors. Quickly I learned their downside – big doors need big wreaths, and big wreaths aren’t cheap! Look at how sad that Easter hanging thingy looks – it used to be adorable at our old house! I have since made half a dozen wreaths and wanted to share how EASY and CHEAP it can be!
I am a crafty person who sews, knits, crochets, and wields a glue gun with the best of them, but I PROMISE, you need no skill to complete these. Each of these took 10 minutes or less, and I’ll break down the cost below! I also did not permanently attach any of these items, so you could use one wreath and change out the embellishments seasonally!
My starting pile of supplies, some of which I didn’t use. Grapevine wreath was $7.99 (-40% for $4.80) at Hobby Lobby, the flowers were 50% off, the ribbon was 66% off, the burlap and wooden “P” were in my craft stash, the “P” banner was 40% off… You can see how I roll! Shop the sales and use those coupons! Top left is a tangle of floral wire… This jumble has lasted me so long I can’t remember what happened to the previously neat roll!
Banner/Burlap bow wreath. Easiest of all. Total cost $15. I used floral wire to attach the banner to the wreath and then used more wire to attach the big burlap bow. Done.
Ribbon wrapped wreath with flowers. The cream version cost $17 total and the blue and white version cost $18 total. I used straight pins to attach the ribbon (folded the ribbon back on itself around one of the “twigs” and pinned) and floral wire for the flowers. There’s no right or wrong way, just weave the wire through the stems and wrap it around until it feels secure. The cream flowers are two pre-arranged bunches, so I didn’t do ANY thinking, just laid the bunches next to each other so that they were hiding each others’ stems, tied them on, and wrapped with ribbon. The three hydrangeas were a little harder to attach but they’re nice and fluffy so you can’t see how many miles of floral wire I used 😉
Lastly, my favorite. A blue flowered 4th of July inspired wreath for $13. This is two bunches of bluebonnet-esque flowers laid on top of each other, tied with wire, and then fluffed and bent out a bit. Most fake flowers have wire in the stems so that you can bend and manipulate them as you wish. The red ribbon was $2 in the end of season clearance and I wrapped it around an extra time to cover the excess stems before tying a pretty bow. This ribbon has wire in the edges which is always nice for holding a pretty shape.
Tips:
-fluffy flowers are easier to work with than not (i.e. hydrangeas are more forgiving than tulips)
-cut the ends of ribbons like I did the red stripe to finish it off nicely
-wide ribbon makes pretty bows easily. Wired ribbon or something stiff like burlap also helps.
-I didn’t have a plan when I walked in the store and it was kind of better. I checked out the end of season shelves, found some ribbon, walked over to the flowers and found a few things I liked, put some ribbon back, found the banner… You get the idea. It was a process that maybe your children are not the best participants in, but 30 minutes later I had 4 solid ideas.
Here are two more great wreath tutorials – burlap and candy!
