Apple Blossom Wreath DIY

I've been wanting a spring wreath to hang on the front door for a while now, and I've seen pretty ones at Pier1 and other places that tempt me.  I made a trip to Michael's today, always a dangerous thing, and I was inspired to try my hand at making my own.

The ingredients:

- 1 pre-made grapevine wreath
- 1 apple blossom garland
- 1 roll of sparkly sage green open-weave ribbon

I thought this was going to be a five minute project.  I thought to myself, "I'll just wrap the garland around the wreath, stick a bow on it and call it done!"  That was overly optimistic, because what happens when you do that is this:

I'm pretty sure that a two year old could have done better.  So on to the next attempt.

I began by plucking individual flowers off the garland, but it became quickly apparent that method was going to require the hot glue gun, stat!

Unfortunately, the hot glue gun is buried at the bottom of my craft closet.  I do believe my next project is cleaning and organizing said craft closet, by the way... So I scrapped the idea of gluing individual flowers on, and instead dissected the garland into smaller pieces.  They were about this big:

I worked my way around the wreath, tucking the bottom of each piece deep into the wreath and then weaving the flowers through the twisted vines to keep them in place.  My wreath shed a lot of twigs and crud onto the floor, so if I were to do this in the future, I'd probably put down a drop cloth or, you know, make the wreath on a table.  And let's not forget that I had a helper...

Once I got all the flowers tucked in, I was left with this:

I was then left to deal with the bow.  I'm usually pretty good at making bows.  With normal ribbon.  This open weave "ribbon" was a challenge, though.  I started out making a bow with the help of my good friend, the red Swingline stapler.  I quickly discovered that the open weave meant that the staples would hold only some of the strands, but the rest would go wonky fast... and then it started fraying at the edges.  I finally just tried tying a bow, then taking another piece of ribbon and tying it around the wreath.  My cats have left prettier looking things in their litter boxes.

I was frustrated, at this point, so got my scissors and just cut the piece I'd tied and pulled it off.  And then I looked at it, and it actually looked kinda cool.  So I tied on another piece of ribbon, and futzed with it for a few minutes and came up with this:

So, here's the final wreath!  I'm happy with it.  It was getting dark out by the time I finished, so this is the best picture I could get.

Meanwhile, Willow's looking forward to our next afternoon craft-time...

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