Dollar Store Fall Wreath - It's Finished!

After I added the gourds and berries to the wreath, I still felt like it was missing something, but I couldn't figure out what it needed. I finally decided that I would go buy an "F" to put in the middle of it.

I bought red, burnt orange and some patterned paper because I couldn't decide which to use. Burnt orange was the clear winner, so I covered the F with that, just like I did with the nursery letters.

I played around with it and added it to the bottom, and then to the top and still wasn't really pleased with the look. It needed something different. The F was so plain, and it still felt empty.

I decided to get my antique brown ink pad out and start creating a border around it - to add a little color and make it a little less plain. I decided that it needed more than just a border - that I really wanted to add some "distress" to it so I lightly rubbed my ink pad back and forth over it until I was happy.

And this is what I wound up with. At first I was concerned that I went too far but the more and more I look at it - I'm really happy with it. I like how it turned out.

This is it, once I got it hot glued into the wreath. I decided to put it on the bottom, versus putting it on the top.

And this is the whole wreath, on the office door. The wreath that was supposed to cost me $6 wound up costing me $11 (for the pumpkins, berries, letter and scrapbook paper), but I think the extra money was worth the outcome and I still didn't break the bank!

And this is the porch, so far. I want to get some pumpkins and put out, and fill my little wrought iron wagon with some fall flowers, but I'll have to do that another day. For now, I'm enjoying my latest creation.

Hope you like it!

Dollar Store Fall Wreath

I saw this rectangular wreath online and thought that it was so cute and unique and wanted to make my own.

So, I stopped at Dollar Tree and bought 6 packages of leaf garland and then went home and took the left over foam board that I had from the custom bulletin board project, and made a frame that I just pieced together with hot glue.

I cut off all of the leaves, from the garland and then set them in a big pile to pull from. One by one, I went around the edges and hot glued leaves to the frame.

I made sure to let some of the leaves hang over the frame so it wasn't so straight lined.

This actually goes very quickly once you get started.

This is after its done. It still needed something...

I had some left over rafia from the nursery letters, so I added a bow to the hanger.

Then I hung it up. This wreath is for the side door, that is on the front porch.

Please excuse the horrible pictures - they are all from my cell phone and this one was at about 5:30 in the morning - there isn't a lot of light that time of the morning!

I still wasn't thrilled with how it was looking, so I took it down to try to figure something else out. D told me "it looks more like a frame than a wreath, I think you need to add something to it". Let me just tell you - its a sad state of affairs when D starts giving me crafting advise. I knew that it looked bad.

I was able to get some picks with some gourds, pears, pumpkins, and berries on them at Hobby Lobby while they were half off. They were normally $2 each, so I got 3 picks for $3.

I added a little something to each corner and I think it's starting to look more like a wreath.

I have another idea for it, that I will share tomorrow...

Until then - Fall blessings,