Throughout the summer I was taking the clippings from our monster Wysteria Bush, and winding them into a wreath, as described here. The plan was to add decorations to this plain wreath throughout the year. It is Thanksgiving here in Canada this week-end, so I used the wreath to make a welcoming fall decoration for the door.
I wanted to use coloured maple leaves for this project but using real ones was out of the question, as they would just dry up and break off. Take this from someone who helped clean up after a certain Hallowe’en party where real leaves were scattered on the carpet! It looked great and was a terrific party, but, oh the mess it left behind!
So for my wreath decoration I bought a pick of leaves from the craft store, which I then took apart and created one sprig of leaves. Using craft wire, I attached a real branch to this, to cover the plastic part and make it look more natural. (Wire was the only medium for attaching that I used for the entire project, so I won’t keep mentioning it again at every step. If you’re doing this with children, be careful because the ends of the wire are very sharp (she says while looking at the pinpoint drop of blood on her pointer finger!). But you can use some glue if you want too.)
Then I attached three real maple tree branches that I had gathered from under a tree in the part. I made a bow using two different widths of sheer ribbon, one a gold colour and one orange, and attached it to my branch and leaves. [To make the bow I cut 5 lengths (2 of the wide ribbon and 3 of the more narrow), about 15 inches long, and a shorter 8 inch piece of both ribbons. I looped the long pieces overlapping the ends by about and inch, then gathered all the loops and twisted some wire around them in the centre. Then I notched the bottoms of the 2 shorter pieces and attached those. I took a 4′ piece of the narrow one and wrapped it to cover the wire.]
At this point it looked nice enough to be a pretty decoration on it’s own, if you don’t have a wreath.
But I had the wreath, so I attached it, and voila!
Nick was out at the store when I hung it on the door and when he returned he came to find me and his first words were, “I like your wreath. It’s nice.” So sweet! After 11 years, 11 months and 24 days of marriage, he still surprises me with his kindness.
Here’s one final artsy photo … I was making this outdoors and a light gust of wind picked up the ribbon.
Hope you enjoyed this DIY for ‘How to make a fall decoration for your door’. Thanks … I appreciate your visit :)
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I added this entry to: ItsABlogParty.com
