1 Craft, Three Ways: Wreaths

This is the perfect time of year for wreaths. Deck the halls and all that, right? I found this little grapevine turkey in my storage closet. My mom gave him to me a while back. We were never sure what to do with it. November we're doing wreaths and here's one that needs to be finished. Necessity is the mother of invention. I did have two issues. First, I kinda liked him the way he was. Second, I have a wreath hanger on my door that presented a bit of a challenge. In the end, I decided to go with simplicity and wrapped wired harvest-themed ribbon around each tail feather except the middle one. There I tied a fancy bow. I twisted the streamers from the bow and glued them on each "feather." When I put him on my door, it was hard to see his little poultry head. By Cami's suggestion, I stuffed him with tulle. It was a light tan and still hard to see the turkey's head. I guess I'll be heading back to the craft store to find a darker brown. For now, I'm kinda liking this little guy, though. -Angie

Wreaths was a hard one for me... not that I don't love wreaths... I totally do. But I already have cute wood craft wreaths for every month and I just recently did a square wreath for my class. So, what else could I possibly do? Then I saw these wreaths in Pottery Barn. As always, I love to get my decorating inspiration from Pottery Barn magazines.

So, this is how I made them. I bought embroidery hoops. I took the outside hoop that screws apart and used that for one wreath. And I cut the inside one open and used it for the other wreath... then just taped it back together when I was done. I bought two books at a thrift store... It was kind of hard to rip up a perfectly good book, but, hey, you do what you've got to do for the sake of decorating. I got two books so that I could have two different sizes of pages. I cut slits in the top and bottom of each page and slipped it onto the embroidery hoop. When I was finished, I closed up the embroidery hoop and tied the ribbon to the hoop. I put these in my office.... I'm going for kind of a French county look in there and I thought the books were kind of officey... (my spell check doesn't think that's a word). I plan on leaving them up as an all the year decoration. (truth be told, I like the PB ones a little better, but I think it's the red ribbon that I like. I have purple as an accent color in my office, so I may go on a hunt for some purple ribbon to brighten the look up a little. On a side note... I just found the most awesome website ever. I love wood crafts and I love wood, but I'd love to take it a little further. This woman has step by step instructions with diagrams and pictures and everything of how to build knock off furniture from stores like Pottery Barn and such. I can't wait to get started in a fun project... I've been wanting to make shelves for my boys' rooms.)

-Anisa

My wreath started out with a simple bleached willow wreath purchased at...the dollar store. Seriously! It was just under the size of a dinner plate. I bought a bag of green feathers, sorted them by size and began inserting them, following their natural curve, in between the twigs, using hot glue to secure them. I did the outer circle first, the inside portion. For the final covering of the wreath, I overlaid the feathers til the willow was covered, still using the hot glue to attach them. I tied a few small bows with some pretty American Craft ribbon, also attaching them with hot glue. Inexpensive and unique!

-C