Valentine Wreath

My favorite crafty project is the one that is quick, useful, and uses up materials already in my stash.  Enter this wreath.  I stumbled upon it somewhere in the blogosphere and thought it would be a cute addition to our other Valentine decorations.  

I modified it a bit to make it smaller, and use materials on hand (see here for how to make the yarn wreath base).  Originally, I used the same charcoal gray yarn to make the argyle stripes, but it looked too chunky (see the wreath on the left in the top photo?).  I like the lighter pink stripes much better - looks more authentic argyle.

The hearts were cut from 2" squares, and the wreath is 9" in diameter.  They fit perfectly on either side of our dining room windows to perk up the space a bit with some Valentine spunk.

Wishing you some satisfying (and free) crafting! 

Yarn wreath tutorial

As mentioned in my last post, I found this great project in .  It's from Stash Happy: Felt by Jennifer Fitzsimmons. 

In the book, she calls for a straw wreath for the base of the wreath. 

As I didn't have one on hand, and didn't feel like buying one, I figured out the following.  I hope you can use it to make one of her beautiful felt blooms wreaths.

To make your own:

Materials: one 10" cardboard cake circle (or a 10" circle cut from a repurposed box)
                scrap battting
                glue gun
                chunky yarn

1. Decide how large an opening you want and trace.  Mine is a 4" diameter (leaving 3" around for the yarn wreath).  Trace the center circle.

2. Cut out the center circle.  I use an exacto knife (be careful!).

3. Roughly cut the batting to the size of the circle.  For mine, I cut two layers.

4. Glop on some glue and stick that batting on.  You just need enough glue to anchor the batting on.

5. Cut the center circle out of the batting.  Repeat with a second layer of batting if desired.

6. On the back, glue one length of your yarn.

7. Start wrapping the yarn.  You want the yarn to be snug enough to hold its place, but you don't need to over-pull.  The batting will squash down quite a bit as you wrap. 

8.  If the skein is too big, you might need to cut a long length of yarn to be able to fit through the hole. No worries. You can tuck and glue (as in photo above) ends and then start another.
When you are done wrapping, cut a length, tuck under the back yarn and glue in place.

9.  You now have one yarn wreath ready to create something beautiful!  Be sure to check out Stash Happy: Felt for Jennifer's gorgeous (and simple) felt blooms.

My favorite part of this project is that, by making the wreath base this way, I had all the materials on hand.  In my mind, that makes this a FREE project!  (Never mind I had bought them at some point in time, right?)

Wishing you some thrifty crafting thrills!

Rainbow birthday - the decorations, part 2

Once the holiday decorations come down, it's time to decorate for our January birthday girl.  That poses a bit of a question of what to put on the doors. 

This year, I found this yarn wreath in Stash Happy: Felt.  I tweaked the directions a bit (I'll show you how tomorrow) to make these two wreaths.

I love the pop of color against the natural color of the yarn and our weathered doors.  I think these fall right into the birthday decor and will be a favorite for years to come.

Wishing you a pop of color in your day!