My DIY Door Wreath

I continue to work on my front porch, front door, and entry room so this is another post regarding that transformation in the making.  I’ve already shared my new front door paint (which I’m totally in LOVE with!)  But, even as much as I love the newly painted door I wanted to give it some pizazz too.  I’ve seen tons of beautiful door wreaths around the Internet and Pinterest so I took a few of the designs I’ve seen and liked and combined them into my own creation for my front door.  Behold…

I started with a green floral foam wreath from Hobby Lobby.  Simple and relatively inexpensive…

The 14” wreath was $7.99 and I’m sure it will most likely go on sale at some point so if you want to copy my idea (which I’m totally cool with by the way!) you might keep checking to see if they put it on sale anytime.  I didn’t want to wait so I paid full price for it.

The next step was to cover the wreath form with burlap.  I used these potato sacks that I had purchased online for this part.  It took almost 2 of the sacks and I had bought 3 of them for a total cost of $2.99 so the total cost of the burlap was less than $3.00.  I just cut the back of the sack off and then cut it into strips.  Then I wrapped the strips around the wreath form, overlapping the end of one strip with the beginning of the next until it was completely covered.

Once the wreath was covered, it was time to work on the décor part.  My first step was to cover the letter “F” (for our last name) in the sheet moss from Hobby Lobby.  I bought the wooden letter from Hobby Lobby as well.  I think it was a couple of dollars and the sheet moss is $4.99.  So, being all clever like I am I carefully laid out the F on the moss sheet and cut out the F leaving a fairly wide margin so I could wrap it around the edge.  Behold…

Um, does anyone see what I did here?  I made a HUGE mistake…epic fail even!  Do you see it yet?  Well, if I covered the letter like I show it here what would I have?  A backwards F that’s what!  Silly me!  I needed to turn the F upside down and then cut it out!  Duh!!!!  OK, redo!  Luckily there was just enough fabric left to do it the second time.  There are some parts that are kind of skimpy because it was so tight a fit but I did manage to get it covered…correctly this time!  (see we all make mistakes from time to time, so you are not alone if you think you are the only one that makes mistakes like this!)

I started wrapping the moss around the letter and stapling it with my staple gun as I went along until it was completely covered.

OK, the F is complete now.  It is going in the center of the wreath.  Around the edges I wanted to add some flowers and our address.  So, I bought 2 bunches of silk flowers from Hobby Lobby.  They WERE on sale!  50% off so they cost a total of $4.99 for both bunches.

I took off several of the flowers from the stems and tried to attach them to the wreath.  I tried a couple of different ideas, hot glue, sticking them into the foam, trying to slip them into the burlap…but none of that worked.  So, instead I got out my hemp twine and I just tied them all to the wreath with the knots in the back.

OK, so the flowers are done, now to work on the address.  I had a hard time finding the numbers I wanted to use for this part.  All of the wooden letters at Hobby Lobby were either too big or too small for what I envisioned.  So, on to plan B.  I went to the Scrapbooking section and I bought a box of chipboard letters that also came with numbers.  Since I’m a scrapbooker I didn’t mind buying the entire box because I will most definitely use them eventually.  The numbers were the perfect size!  The first step was to paint them.  I just used a brush and my scrapbook paint which is just basically the same thing as acrylic paint you buy in the art department at Hobby Lobby. 

One note of advice here, I used the wooden stick to gently move the numbers after I painted them so they wouldn’t get stuck to the cardboard underneath them.  I wanted to make sure they would be easily removed and if I left them as is the paint would dry and most likely stick the letters to the surface under them. 

Once the paint was dry I wanted to give them a coat of clear covering.  I used Stampin’ Up’s Crystal Effects for this.  I just squeezed it on each number covering it completely with the Crystal Effects.  Then I let them dry.

After they dried completely (this part I let dry for several hours to make sure they were set firmly) I attached them to the wreath also tying them on using the hemp twine.

I took a black magic marker and just colored the twine on the parts that were covering parts of the numbers.  Then I took a simple grosgrain black ribbon and tied the F in place.  The F actually fits pretty snug in the center of the wreath but I still wanted it tied on.  I contemplated adding a big bow but decided against it.  I like the simple bow instead.

So, that is my wreath!  Here it is on the front door…

I really love how it turned out.  What I don’t love though is the unevenness of it.  I think I need another wreath on the other door.  I’m going to do a second one but instead of the address and the initial, I’m just going to do the flowers on 2 sides of the wreath and call it done.  What do you think?  Do you think that will look ok?  Or should I do another F in it?  Should I just leave the one wreath?