Craft 4: Making an Easter Wreath

This year LJ and I are hosting Easter Supper for both sides of the family. I'm pretty excited about it. As I started planning the holiday, I decided I really wanted to put a wreath on our door. I wanted to do one for Christmas, but life got so busy that it never happened. So, I made the Easter wreath a priority and this is what I ended up creating:

You like it? I think it's pretty obvious by the picture that I'm proud of my handiwork. And before you ask - No, I didn't find this on Pinterest, I made it up myself. :) (Love that site, but it feels like everything creative I do gets credited to it now.)

Without further ado, here is the 'how to':

Supplies Needed:

- Wreath (mine was $5 from Hobby Lobby. I picked it because it looks kind of egg shaped)

- Plastic eggs (Target find - $4 for both bags)

- Glue Gun

- 3m hook for door (had on hand)

- Burlap (Need about 1/3 yard for wreath, which cost $1.33)

- Ribbon ($4 at Hobby Lobby)

- Scissors 

 

Step One: Attach the ribbon to the wreath.

To figure out how much ribbon I needed I just eyeballed it against the front door. And then I gave myself a little extra. After all, you can always cut some off, but you can't really add ribbon on.

(before you comment: no, I didn't plan my outfit based on the ribbon...just turned out that way!)

Next I threaded the ribbon through the wreath. I chose the tree branch wreath in part because I knew I could thread something through it. This way I don't have to worry about the wreath shifting and hanging off center.

Then I used the scissors to make a 3" cut down the center of each ribbon end. This is because the ribbon is too thick to just tie in a knot. After cutting it in half I tied ends together, connecting the ribbon with two knots.

Step Two: Adding the Burlap.

I stinking love burlap. It is so easy to work with, looks great, and is pretty cheap. I bought 4 yards of it for Easter stuff. I cut myself two pieces, one larger than the other, for the wreath. I didn't measure them, I just kind of eyeballed it. But if I had to guess, I would say the larger piece was 10"x15" and the smaller was 7"x12". The thing about burlap is when you cut it you need to carefully follow one line down the fabric. Most fabric you can just cut wherever you want, but burlap will unravel on you if you aren't careful. I thought gathering the burlap would look really cute. I'm going to show you the technique I used to gather it on the larger piece:

First, you find a string in the very center and pick it clear from the rest:

Next, you pull on this string, which will naturally gather up the burlap. 

Once this side of the burlap is gathered (only gather it about half way down the burlap, you don't want to pull this string all the way out) you need to tie a big knot it the string. This will keep the burlap gathered. It's a little hard to see, but this is the knot:

Then you just flip the burlap around and repeat the same process. You have to find the same exact string you used before for this to work. Here's the knot in the other side of the burlap:

After you're sure both sides are knotted big enough that the string can't slip back through the fabric, you cut off the excess and you have a piece of burlap gathered down the middle:

Next, you grab your glue gun and stick that sucker on anywhere you think it looks good. The reason I gathered the fabric is because if I tried to glue on just a normal piece of burlap it wouldn't have bunched up and looked nest-like.

 

You have to be pretty careful when you're glue-gunning burlap. The fabric has holes all over it and so when you push the fabric down the hot glue seeps through and will glue your hand if you're not careful.

Here is the wreath with the two gathered pieces of burlap. Larger piece on right, smaller on left. I went for an off center look.

Step Three: Adding the Eggs

Before I started the burlap process, I picked out the eggs I wanted to use. I bought these eggs at Target, and while they are cute, I didn't want to use every color, only the pastel ones.

I ended up picking out 9 eggs to use (ones inside wreath).

After the burlap was on, it was time for eggs. These are the plastic eggs that open up to put treats inside. Well, I didn't want these to open up while they were hanging on the door so I glued them shut with a little hot glue.

Then I just eyeballed it, egg by egg. Gluing them onto the burlap wherever I thought they looked cute. I had to use a LOT of glue under each egg so that the glue would seep through the burlap and attach to the wood sticks underneath. 

And that's all it took to finish off the wreath. Didn't take long at all, maybe one or two episodes of Duck Dynasty (yes, that's what I watched while I worked).

Step Four: Hanging the wreath on the door.

The last step was to stick this sucker onto our door. I used a 3m removable hook to attach it. I ended up attaching the hook upside down to the top of our door, on the inside. This way the ribbon will hang over the top of our door. I figured this will keep the wreath from falling in a gust of wind. 

Remember to let the hook sit for an hour before you put any weight on it. Otherwise your wreath might end up on the ground.

And here's my 'after' picture of the wreath on our door:

Oh, and while I had the burlap out, I had Mandy help me cut it into place-mats for Easter. So stay tuned to see how the tables end up. I'm having around 20 people over, so I'll be decorating three tables on a pretty tight budget.

(this is a pile of place-mats)