DIY Easter Wreath

So earlier on this year I decided I wanted to make a wreath for Easter. I had repurposed an old wreath for Christmas and had enjoyed making it and displaying my own work. I thought about buying a basic wreath that I could update for other holidays and seasons and then I had the bright idea of making my own wreath from scratch! Good idea in theory but as you will see I didn't completely think it through and had to improvise so as not to waste everything I had done and bought! As well as the wreath almost being a disaster I took pictures of my work in progress only to realise that I didn't have the memory card in the camera half the time! So some of the details have no pictures, you will just have to use your imagination!

My bright idea was to use items I already had to make a basic wreath shape and then purchase just a few bits of pieces to decorate it with. The point was to show a cheap way to make a wreath!

I started with a bunch of yellow pipecleaners. I wound them around themselves to provide a round shape.

I had lots from some project ages ago!

I took each end and wound it round another.

I made it as tight as possible so as to not have any sharp edges.

I wound extra pipecleaners over the top of these for structure (hah!).

This left me with this shape. It had very little stability at this stage so I got some yarn and began to wound this round tightly. I did this in stages to make it easier to wind around, knotting the yarn every so often in place.

This gave it the structure I needed, or at least what I thought was sufficient!

I purchased a pack of Styrofoam eggs, some wooden butterflies, wired flowers and paper flowers. For the eggs I painted some with acrylics very roughly to get a marble effect, while the rest I decopaged with tissue paper I already owned.

You can see the rough paint job here. I used acrylic paints that I mixed together to gain these pastel shades.

I did the same with the wooden butterflies which I really love!

I then began to decorate the wreath. I started with the wire flowers and wound them around the wreath in various places to space them out. I then used hot glue to attach the eggs and other flowers. I used some of the left over tissue paper to make paper flowers which were great fillers.

I strung the butterflies with some fine cotton and knotted these to either side of the wreath, covering the knots with eggs and flowers so that they hung in the middle.

When I was done I picked up the wreath to see any gaps and that's when I realised that the whole thing wanted to sit like a giant egg! It looked awful! I was going to jack the whole thing in but I didn't want to waste all the pretty things I had bought, so I spotted this massive cardboard photo prop I had used for a long ago birthday and traced the wreath onto the back of it. This is where you have to use your imagination as clever clogs here had taken the memory card out and didn't notice the camera flashing warning me about it until it was too late!

I cut a large cardboard circle out and glued the wreath to it. I then carefully cut this to fit more neatly to the already finished wreath. As the wreath was already covered at this point, I couldn't get as close as I would have liked so added more tissue paper flowers and some large felt butterflies that I had laying around to cover it over. I also had left over all the middles to my die cut flowers from my Spring garland which made good fillers too. The cardboard gave the wreath the structure it needed to hold a round shape. Definitely not the way to do it and I certainly won't be using pipecleaners in this way again! I will just buy a plain wreath in future!!

The overall result after the disastrous DIY isn't too bad. I think some green foliage would have been a nice touch to break up the colours a bit. 

I am pleased to say I can't see any cardboard!

Have you made a wreath for Easter? Have you had any disasters? Share on my Facebook page! At least to make me feel better!

Happy Wednesday!