Spring Wreath

Using tutorials found here and here, I made a fresh little spring wreath for our entrance hallway. 

I started out with just a styrofoam wreath form, some pins and two bundles of yarn - Stitch Nation's Full o' Sheep wool in Thyme (I only ended up using one bundle of yarn):

I tied a knot in the end of the yarn and used a pin to hold it in place.  Then, I just started tightly wrapping the yarn around the form. 

Okay, so, after wrapping a couple inches of the wreath form, I set it down and walked away from it for a couple of hours.  I came back to my wreath form shredded by the smallest, furriest, and arguably most destructive member of my household.

I ran out and got a new wreath form and just started over.  The wreath form is white styrofoam in the rest of the pictures.  That's why. 

I found that the quickest and most effective way to wrap the yarn was to wrap it loosely around a dozen or so times and "squish" it and twist it around until it was tight on the wreath form and lined up with the rest. 

Yarn done, I started making the flowers.  I started by cutting out a lot of felt circles in different sizes and colors.

After the circles were cut out, I traced a spiral stemming out from the center.  I cut on the spiral, leaving a small uncut circle in the middle.  While my glue gun was warming up, I used my scissors to make the outside edge a little wavy and more interesting. 

I folded the outside "tail" under a little and started rolling the spirals up into these sweet little flowers, securing my uncut circle middle to the bottom with hot glue.  I hotglued some leftover pearl beads into the center of each flower on a whim. 

After I had made several flowers, I arranged them on my wreath and hot glued them on.

A close-up of the flowers.

It hangs a little off center right now because the weight added by the flowers.  I'm going to add a little ribbon to the top to hang it from.  That should help balance out the way it hangs. 

The total cost for this project was just under $10, that includes both rolls of yarn and both wreath forms.



P.S. I had a total blast looking for inspiration pics for this project.  If you made a wreath, I'd LOVE to see it.  I think I'm becoming a little obsessed.....

Outdoor Lighting - Part 2

I have a feeling that this will turn into a 3 post project.  The weather wasn't cooperating much lately, so it has taken me a while to get the second step underway.

After I cut the plexiglass (see the results here). I spray painted the outdoor lantern-style light with Krylon Outdoor Copper spray paint. I finished this product at dusk, so it was hard to get a good shot of the new color. But, here's a sort of before and an extreme close-up after:

In the continuation of my quest to add light to our dismal yard, at the end of the summer last year, I picked up 20 of these lights for a song (well, actually for about a buck each).  They are cheap brown plastic, but I knew that they would add a lot of much needed light to our yard.   

I wasn't wild about the brown plastic look, so I gave them a quick coat of the same outdoor copper spray paint that I used on the lantern-esque light fixtures.  I covered the solar panels with Frog Tape brand painter's tape and gave each light a quick coat of spray paint.  Here is my little light army drying after being painted:

Two very light coats later, I am just thrilled with the results.  Once the weather starts cooperating, I will get them in the ground and I will post pictures of these lights in place.