Burlap Wreath with Fabric Flowers

What to do with lots of burlap?! For the wedding we did a burlap runner down the tables. For that I bought ready to do burlap strips from Michaels. They were $5 for a 30 feet, and it is about 6 inches wide. It was a great buy, and was exactly what I was looking for. Now that the wedding is over I have lots of burlap and wanted to come up with some good things to do with it. Where to turn for ideas? Pinterest of course!

Lots of cute things came up, and I got lots of ideas, but I knew right away I wanted to do a couple wreaths. There were lots of designs and ways to go about it. I was going to a bridal shower this weekend, and decided this was the perfect opportunity to try out making a wreath.

I adapted the way I did the wreath from a tutorial on Today's Fabulous Find. For the wreath base, I took a tip from The Penny Parlor and instead of buying a foam wreath base for this, I headed over to the Home Depot plumbing department and got a piece of foam tubing for 97 cents! This is a 6 foot piece, and I cut it in half to and used duct tape to attach the ends into a wreath form. Craft fail note, I also bought a piece of tubing with a larger diameter...it didn't create a very nice circle, and I had to give up on it. So, stick with the smallest one. But, 97 cents for 2 wreaths is much better then $6-$7 for one!

This is the bigger size tubing, and it just kept getting kinks, but you do the same thing with the smaller size and it works like a charm!

Materials:

Wreath base

Burlap runner/strip - 10 yards (or you can get a couple yards of burlap from the fabric store)

Pins

Fabric flowers, bows, or other decorations you want to add

First you are going to want to cover the wreath base with burlap.

 You are going to cut your burlap into squares. I just took the strip, and folded it over to get an aproximate square, it doesn't need to be perfect. This was a bit messy for me, and I was doing it on the couch and luckily had a little blanket under me to catch the bits of burlap falling everywhere.

To create the bubbles on the wreath, I created a triangle with the square an put a pin through the corner, then pulled the other two corners in and put the pin through those as well.

You'll end up with this bubble, and it was just a little big for me, so I then pulled each of the corners in again and put the pin through the gaps in the burlap. On the cut sides you have to put it down a little farther so it doesn't thread out,or you put the pin in the threads of the burlap.

You then end up with this bubble.

You then attach it onto the wreath form. With the tubing I used, if the pin was put straight in it would poke out the other side and pull out easily. However, I just put the pin in at an angle, so that it slide right along the foam part of the tubing and it stayed really well. Keep putting them around until you have filled up the wreath!

Here is the back view, I didn't do bubbles on the back, I didn't think it was needed and the wreath form was covered from the initial wrap around.

You could leave this wreath as is, but I wanted to add a little something to it. I did some fabric flower rosettes, and put them on pins. Then, they can be taken off and different decorations can be added to it for different seasons of the year.

Fabric flowers are fairly simple. I don't know if this is the best way to do them, but this is how I've always done it. You can also do this with ribbons and it comes out great!

You'll need strips of fabric and a glue gun. I use up most of my fabric scraps doing this. Your strips can very in length and width. I do them 2-3 inches wide, and whatever length I have. The wider and longer your fabric, the bigger your flower. Pretty common sense, huh? :)

Start with tying a knot in the end of the fabric. You'll use this as the base to wrap the rest of the flower.

Glue down the tail of the knot, then start twisting the fabric, and gluing it down.

Continue to twist, roll, and glue. 

When you get the flower the size you want, you are going to glue the end of the fabric to the back of the flower to finish it off.

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Crystal B Inspired By...

Crepe Paper Flowers

One of the bigger projects I had for the wedding was the flowers. After looking at several different options, I decided to make all of my own paper flowers instead of getting real flowers. I picked up this kit to do a little experimenting to see its done and how long this would take me to make all of these.

It actually came with supplies to make some of these flowers, and after trying them out and seeing how they came out I decided to go for it. I ordered more crepe paper sheets and get the wire and LOTS of floral tape and went to town.

These were a little tricky at first, but once I had a system down of cutting and taping it went faster. These were a cut and tape individual petals, and you just have to be okay with your hands being all sticky from that wonderful tape. I was very happy with the result of them, and while they were time consuming they were worth it. Here are some pictures of some of the completed flowers. These aren't the way the final bouquets looked, but a good idea of it. I actually don't have a picture of the final bouquets at the moment, but I'm sure someone has one that I'll get soon enough and can share.

Martha has lots of paper flower tutorials on her website, and my original intention was to just pull her off of there. But, once I saw this kit for $12 with supplies to experiment, I thought it worth it for the testing. And, there were enough types of flowers in there that I didn't need to print and figure out the online ones. 

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