Hoppy Easter!

Typo, but it stays. :p

Over the past week, I've been doing a LOT of web searching for easy Easter crafts, and came across a cute wreath. I remembered the basics, but of course, can not remember where I found it (I really need to start book marking these fabulous ideas!).

If anyone knows where I might have found this wreath, please let me know so I can give props to the mad genius behind it!

Michelle helped me find it! The original was done by Cindi over at This Is My Life.

Easter Egg Wreath

You'll Need:
Cardboard (the lid to the empty take out pizza box laying next to the trash may or may not work, I admit to nothing)
Regular sized plastic Easter Eggs- I used 29 for the bottom, and 11 on the top row
Easter Grass
Fake Flowers*
Ribbon*
Glue gun & like 5 sticks of glue

*optional- the wreath I saw didn't have either, but I did add flowers to mine, and considered a bow, but felt the wreath was busy enough on it's own.

For this, I dug out my "Box O'Eggs"

.....yes, I really have a "Box O'Eggs". I'm -always- in charge of the egg hunts at various relatives houses, and have amassed quite the collection. Unfortunately, I seem to have an affinity for odd eggs. I had no where near enough plain, regular sized eggs. Plenty of jumbo eggs, lots of minis, and a lot of shaped things- like peep shaped containers, and Spiderman shaped eggs, etc.

I had to make a run to DT just to make the wreath, even with a box of eggs this big.

1. Use a plate to draw the outer circle of your wreath shape on the cardboard you choose which may or may not have come from that pizza you grabbed when you felt like cheating for dinner the other nigh which probably came from a cardboard box you were right to save. For the total width of the wreath, you'll want it about 2 to 2.5" wide, so hunt around for various items, or just eyeball it for the inner circle. I had a foam wreath form, and used the inner circle to make my inner circle.
2. Take out your eggs, and hot glue the rounded "butt" end of the egg, and slap it on the form on the outer circle, with the point facing outward. You'll want to only use about half the space, because you will be adding an inner layer next.
3. Once you have filled up the outer circle, do an inner circle. If you find some areas where they don't have enough room, add a bead of glue to the outer eggs, and glue them straight to those.
4. Now the messy part. Take your Easter grass and the glue gun, and squirt glue into the center spaces between the inner and outer circle of eggs. Drizzle glue around the inner sides of the eggs as well. Then, stuff it with Easter grass. It doesn't have to be perfect. I tried using a pencil to shove it in place, but it created a bigger mess of glue and grass. Keep doing this until there is grass in ever space of the middle section. 
5. Start gluing your eggs again- you want to place eggs along the top, all around where the grass is, so that each egg is resting between the inner and outer layer. 
6. Once the top layer of eggs is complete, it's time to give your wreath a hair cut. I strongly recommend doing this over top of the trash, because it's messy. Just clip and trim until you are happy with the amount of "hair" left over.
7. I had some yellow and pink flowers hanging around, so I took the heads off, and glued them in little spaces all around the wreath. You could use bigger flowers, or skip it all together, but I like them. Of course, once I was done, I found my purple flowers. Oh well!

Because of the cardboard form, this is likely not a weather-proof wreath for outside, but it sure is cute for inside! I considered using a "real" wreath form, but I think it would have been much harder to fill out with rounded objects on a rounded surface.

Total costs:
Eggs:  $4 spent on a total of 72 eggs (18/$1 at dollar store), but only used 40 eggs- $2.22 worth
Wreath Form: Free (after a fashion...)
Grass: $1 (thought I had some, but I couldn't find it)
Flowers: On Hand, or $1 at dollar store

A fairly inexpensive wreath. Probably even more so, had I not been so picky about my eggs. I had enough medium eggs, if I had used patterned, printed, eggs with cutouts, clear eggs, metallic eggs, etc. But, I wanted plain, solid colors.

Top O' The Morning

Good Morning (again)!

This morning, I worked on a wreath for St. Patrick's Day. I love how it turned out, but I'm kind of sad I can't hang it outside to show off. It's too cute to keep hidden! Maybe I'll hang it outside on the 17th, if it's not too wet out.

St. Patrick's Day Wreath for $3.75

You'll Need:
8 sheets of felt- I used 2 sheets each of white, lime green, kelly green, and forest green. $2 @ 4/$1 not on sale
Green Marabou trim- Clearance at 75% off- $.75
Foam Wreath Form- Dollar Tree- $1
Ball Point Pins- On hand (I've heard that the flat end pins hurt your thumb after a while of pushing them in!)

1. Find something circular to use, and draw as many circles as you can on your sheets of felt. I used a smaller than average size spool of ribbon, and was able to get 12 circles. Anything larger will likely yield less. Smaller, and I could have easily gotten 16, but I don't know how smaller circles would have looked. Cut the circles out.
2. Fold a circle in half. Fold that half into thirds. Pinch it together, and use a pin through the bottom to attach it to the wreath. You could also use hot glue and a pen or pencil to glue the circles straight to the wreath if you are so inclined, but I imagine it would take more work.
3. Fill out the wreath. I added a line around the edge to hide the green florist foam I used for the wreath. If you use a wreath form that's rounded, and not flat like mine, you could wrap the form in ribbon first, and you wouldn't have to add extra circles.
4. Once that was done, and all my circles were gone, I dug out a spool of marabou "ribbon" trim I got on clearance after Christmas for 75% off. I ran it around the edge of the the wreath twice, pinning the rope to the form. I repeated this on the inside. The fur doesn't show up real great from the front, but it completely covered the edges of foam that were visible. 

I was going to add a bow, but I didn't have anything on hand that really matched, and was wide enough ribbon to show up good. I like how it looks without a bow, though. I had also picked up little plastic green "coins" at Big Lots to use, but decided not to.

This style of wreath has been all over the blog world over the past month, so it's hardly original. In fact, Heidi at Craft Monkey did one very similar to mine back before Valentine's Day, instead of doing a red, white, and pink one.

 

  

  

 

This post is linked up at the link parties listed here.

Easy Peasy Valentine Wreath

In my invalid state (read that with a bit of sarcasm), I can't do much crafting. I can't sit at my craft desk, because the chair is a wood dining room chair. My computer chair, which is easier (but not pain-free) to sit in doesn't fit at the craft desk. So, I'm limited. And of course, the post-Christmas craft laziness had come to an end. All I've wanted to do the past few days is craft, craft, craft!

Today, I finally tried something, which I did while laying down. It kept my fingers busy, but alas, I didn't take any tutorial photos. It's really easy, though- just fold the ribbon, lay it on top of the hanger, and pull the ends through the loop. Simple.

You'll Need:

1 Wire Hanger (On hand)

2 rolls of White Tulle (Dollar Tree rolls- I used about 1 and a half, though to make it fuller, you could easily use up to 4 rolls)

2-3 rolls of various red, pink, or white ribbons- I recommend using wired ribbon.

1. Bend the wire hanger into a heart shape. Easier said, than done. The hanger kept wanting to sort of fold in half.
2. Start cutting 3-4" lengths of ribbon & tulle. For my tulle, I used 40 total, 20 for each side of the heart. However, if you want a full tulle heart, you'll want to use about 4 rolls of tulle. 40 loops didn't quite fill an entire side, and was about 1 & 1/2 rolls worth of tulle. For the ribbon, I used about 14 ribbon loops per side. Again, the more full you want it, the more ribbon you'll use. You could do 20 per side, so it alternates between tulle & ribbon.
3. I did not tie the ribbon and tulle in place. Instead, I used the folding method where you pull the ends around something, and pull them through the loop at the end of the ribbon. Did that make sense?
4. Fluff the ribbon- I used 1 roll that was not wired, and it kept wanting to droop, so I sort of tucked it behind tulle, so it was being held in place.
5. I added a small ribbon bow to the middle with the non-wired ribbon I had left over.

All in all, I used 1 whole bolt of white sheer ribbon with red hearts (3 yards), and 1 whole bolt of red non-wired red & silver ribbon (4 yards), 1 whole bolt of tulle, plus half to 3/4ths of another roll (each roll is 8 yards), and about 3/4ths of a roll of red & silver wired ribbon (this roll was 5 yards).

I had all of this stuff on hand, but you could get all the stuff needed at the dollar store for $5-6, so it's a cheap craft. And best of all- when Valentine's Day is over, just remove the ribbon scraps & tulle, and set them aside for another project

Linked up at the parties listed here.

Last Night's Craft

I made this at my mom's request last night...


I used the same process that I used to make my harvest colored wreath over the weekend. I did have to change up the supplier though- Dollar Tree didn't have much in large packs of lime green (or similar light green shades) of ornaments. I did find them at Walmart, though.


Price wise, there wasn't a large difference. Walmart has boxes containing 24 ball ornaments for $5. At Dollar Tree, you can get 5 of the 5 packs for $5, equaling 25 ornaments, so it's just 1 less for the cost at Walmart. I was expecting worse! They did also have similar 5 pack tubes, but those were double the price at $2 for 5.

The small ornaments Walmart also had. The packs include 15 small and tiny ornaments (a mix of 2 sizes) for $3. That was a bit pricier than Dollar Tree, but the packs came with both the satin/matte finish, and the shiny finish, plus the alternating sizes.

I was able to make this gorgeous wreath for my mom for just $14! I found the ribbon in the Wedding area at Dollar Tree. All of the Christmas ribbon is in shades of gold, which would have clashed.