Back in September I guest posted over on Hi, It's Jilly! for her "fall in love with fall" series where I shared fall-inspired door decor. Thought I'd bring it home, since it IS still fall and all:
I used to think that making wreaths was something old ladies did with plastic flowers and weird wicker baskets and such. I had zero interest in that type of "crafting." Once I started my blog and was looking for new ways to be unique and creative with my crafting, I realized you can make a wreath out of just about anything... And they've been some of my favorite creations ever since!
Today, I'm going to show you how to make:
Which, ironically, includes some fake floral stuff. Ha!
So, let's get started! Gather all your supplies! You can make the basic Paper Lunch Bag Wreath with the items below:
And you can make the "supreme" version (the one pictured) with the additional optional supplies:
A note about supplies. One thing I try hard to do is keep my crafting affordable. We're all on a budget right? So my number one tip for wreaths is to check out your local thrift stores for wreath forms. My local store usually has styrofoam and straw wreath forms regularly and they are $0.75!! Which is awesome compared to like $12 at Michael's.
For this specific wreath, my form is a 10 inch squared edge form (but you can totally use any kind of foam form) that I got at the thrift store. I got "giant" paper lunch bags at Walmart for just over a dollar for a 300 pack (they are slightly larger than normal lunch bags). I found the crepe paper leaves at the dollar store. They came in packs according to color, so if you want a multi-colored wreath like the one pictured, you'll have to get more than one pack. I got four, each pack has 10 leaves. I have a ton left over for a different craft now! The floral ball shaped thingies are from the dollar store as well. The stamps came from JoAnn's in their $0.99 bins, and the mini stamp pads and the twine came from Walmart in their $1.00 craft bins. SO. There's your shopping list, in case you needed some ideas...
Prepare your bags:
1. Keeping the bag flat, use your scissors to cut across the top (where it's all jaggedy) and to cut the bottom off.
2. Slice the bag open down the middle seam on the back.
3. If you opened it up now, it would look like this.
4. Fold it all up on the folds and then fold it in half.
5. Cut it in three (somewhat) equal pieces.
6. Take each piece, open them up and then crumple them.
I needed three bags to cover my wreath form (9 strips), you may need a few more or less depending on the size of your form and how crumply you keep your strips when applying them.
Wrap the wreath:
1. Begin with your naked wreath form. Pick which side is the back and lay it backside up.
2. Put some hot glue right on the form.
3. Straighten out one of your paper bag strips slightly (leaving some of the folds and wrinkles as is) and smoosh it down into the hot glue.
4. Wrap it around the front of the wreath, then tuck it under to the back. When you are wrapping, make sure to overlap the paper a little and also keep it rumply.
5. When you run out of strip, add a line of hot glue along the end.
6. Push the paper strip down onto the wreath form.
7. Now, take a new strip and add a line of hot glue to one end.
8. Smoosh it down onto the wreath, overlapping the end of the last strip. Place it at a slight angle to help it lay flatter as you wrap.
9. Wrap and wrap until you run out.
10. Hot glue the end down.
11. Continue adding strips with hot glue, overlapping, crumpling and sometimes twisting and smooshing a bit, until the form is completely wrapped.
Adding leaves:
1. Begin with your wrapped wreath form. Again, you'll need to decide which is the front and which is the back.
2. Pick a leaf to start, put a little hot glue on the back.
3. Press it down onto the wreath, anywhere. Hold it there for a moment.
4. Voila! A leaf! Pull up the edges a bit.
5. The best part about these leaves is that they have wires for veins. So before you add them to the wreath, crumple them up a bit. Bend them and shape the edges. Most fall leaves aren't perfectly flat, are they?
6. Plus, you can curl the stem, which looks cooler than a long straight lame stem.
7. Put some hot glue on the back.
8. And add it to the wreath right next to the previous leaf.
9. You will want to overlap your leaves. Place them at different angles and in different spots along the wreath. Bend them into each other. Continue adding them and filling in holes until the leaves cover a little less than half of the form.
And you could totally stop here! This would make a perfectly pretty fall wreath for your door. Just:
10. Tie a piece of twine in a loop. Place the loop under the wreath form.
11. Pull one end of the loop through the other end and tighten. Add a dab of hot glue to keep it in place.
And then you can hang it!
But, you could also keep going.
Adding more pizazz:
1. Take the little plastic balls and pull them off of the large stem so they are single stemmed and smaller, but still in little bunches.
2. Add hot glue along the stem.
3. Poke it down under a leaf.
4. I places mine at the intersections of leaves - where they overlapped - to hide the glue-y stems.
5. I also made them more concentrated at the bottom of the wreath, and more sparse toward the top.
Again, you could stop here! Another perfectly pretty wreath for your door!
BUT. What about just a leeeeettle more?
Adding even more pizazz:
1. Cut your fuzzy ball flowers apart, leaving stems on each one.
2. Separate them into three piles, one for each color, and then a third pile for a mix of the two colors. Fan one of the piles out and shape it until you like it, place it on top of a scrap strip of paper bag, squirt hot glue on the stems and wrap the bag around the stems. This will keep the flowers together how you want them and hide the stems.
3. Trim the ends of the stems and attach the flowers to the bottom of the wreath (just barely overlapping the leaves) by hot gluing the paper wrapped part down. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the mixed color pile.
4. Pull a few balls off of the last pile of flowers. Then repeat steps 2 and 3 again.
5. Once you've glued the paper wrapped stems down to the wreath, hot glue the single balls into any holes of empty spots.
6. Cut a small section of scrap paper bag and glue it over the last stems sticking out to hide them.
And then you could stop.
But if you're like me, you don't know when to stop. So why not shnazz it up some more?
Add a banner:
1. Cut a piece of twine to fit across the inside of the wreath, with a little extra wiggle room to glue.
2. Fold a piece of scrap paper bag in half and cut out three triangles and a rectangle.
3. Use your "background pattern stamp" and a neutral color stamp pad to stamp a background on the pieces. Mine is brown chevron.
4. You can use whatever kind of quote or phrase you want for the rectangle piece, I went with Thank You, for a Thanksgiving-y theme. I used a bright contrasting turquoise so it would stand out.
5. Open up your triangle, lay a line of hot glue down the middle.
6. Lay your twine across the inside, making sure the paper piece is where it needs to be,
7. and smoosh the triangle closed around the twine.
8. Repeat this for the other two triangles and the rectangle.
9. Turn your wreath over and glue the ends of the twine down to the wreath.
10. To hide the glue spots and make the twine extra secure, glue down a small square of paper bag over each end.
11. Turn your wreath over. Done!
And because there's likely no more trends you could possibly add at this point without making it seem completely over the top, you're finished!
Just hang proudly on your front door and enjoy along with the nice cool fall weather!
It's my favorite season - I think because of the colors. I love that this wreath illustrates that.
You might also like some of my other fall-inspired wreaths! Like:
OR, my "flavors of fall - dessert edition" which includes recipes for five different yummy fall desserts!
Thanks for asking me over, Jillian! Hope to see you all at my blog, or you can find me on facebook and pinterest!
