Patriotic Wreath

Awhile ago I was searching Google Images for some 4th of July craft ideas and I came across this wreath. It jumped out at me and I knew I had to create it. Fortunately for me someone blogged the step by step instructions, with pictures. She admitted she got the idea from someone else who had done the wreath, but she did invent the springy star idea. I liked it, so I didn't change it. So while this wasn't my original idea I'm still going to show you how I did it. Besides, I need something to blog about.

As usual, I am not a professional photographer nor do I drag out the good camera. (Her pictures were so good).

I wish I would have closed my dishwasher before taking this pic. 

First thing you need is some felt. I bought mine at Michaels at .29 cents a sheet. 6 red, 6 white and 4 blue. You may not need this much, you may need more. It all depends on how close you squish them together on the wreath. You want to cut them into 2x2 squares (Don't worry about being exact). It makes it a lot easier if you stack a few sheets together and cut them all at once. Once cut you will fold the squares into triangles. 

Fold once corner to corner.

Then fold again.

You are going to pin these pieces to your wreath on the folded bottom corner. I got the wreath at Michaels craft store. Just to clarify I found everything I used at Michaels. 

The wreath.

The pinning. 

The Shining. 

You're going to keep pining your folded squares all along the wreath. As you pin spread apart the folded squares so they look fuller. You're going to do a lot of pinning, pulling and fluffing. 

Try not to pin your pieces too close together. This will make it look really squished and you will probably run out of felt squares before you are done. I had to pull out quite a few pieces till I got it to look how I wanted. 

Space, the final frontier. 

While I alternated between red and white area's you can do whatever you want. Mix the red and white all around the wreath, mix all the red, white and blue together, whatever way you want to do it works. I did not measure how large of a space for each color, I just tried to eyeball it and hope they turned out about the same size. Make sure to leave a larger area for the blue. 

Once you have all the felt on you can add the stars. I used some very sparkly scrapbook paper. The paper wasn't very thick so I glued some card stock paper onto the back. I don't have one of those new fangled fancy machines that punch out whatever shape you want so they are all perfect and the same size. I'm stuck in the olden days, I used a pencil to draw out the stars and scissors to cut them out. I know, I know, it's like how grandpa had to walk uphill to school, in the snow, with no shoes when he was a kid. 

You can glue the stars right to the wreath, or you can skip the stars and place a few pieces of the white felt throughout the blue. To make the springy stars I used some silver floral wire and wrapped it around a sharpie marker to make it spiral. I attached the stars back to back using a glue dot (scrapbooker thing) with the wire in the middle of the dot, gluing the stars together. Did that make sense? I don't think so either. Let me see if I have a picture of what I did. 

Yeah, like this. Just put another star on top of that one. 

Take your springy star and push one end of the wire into your wreath between some of the blue felt. The wire should poke through easily. I straightened out the end a bit first so it goes into the wreath easier and so it sticks out a bit better. 

I found some cool patriotic looking ribbon, that you can't really see since it's backwards in this pic, and used it to make a loop so I can hang the wreath up. I just pinned it to the back using a few pins for a good hold and so they wouldn't just rip through the ribbon from the weight. 

Notice I did not decorate the back of the wreath, no one will see it and it makes the wreath too puffy so it wont lay flat. Trust me, by the time you've felted up the front (HA! felt up..felted up, get it?) you wont want to do the back. 

AND WE ARE DONE! Sheesh. The blog I read for this explained everything so quickly, easily and clear, plus  her pictures were set up so cool, like side by side and junk and stuff.  I really need to learn the art of blog tutorials. I didn't bookmark her blog, but I know it was called Capitol B, and I'm sure y'all can find her.  I made sure to mention this at the end, so y'all had to read my stuff before knowing who you really need to look for. I need to look again so I can find other completely awesome craft projects to try and do, and learn how to blog. 

It looks great on my door, but I wont keep it there. I don't want spiders making their homes in it. I live in the south, we have a lot of spiders... *shudder*