Copycat Wreath

Around Christmas while drooling over all the beautiful things posted on the MANY linky parties, I saw a gorgeous wreath made by Myra over at My Blessed Life. I immediately decided I must make one for myself.... Too bad my ADD kicks into overdrive when crafting. What could have probably been done in one afternoon by a normal crafter took me THREE WEEKS! That's right, you read it correctly the first time. Little by little I pieced this sucker together and am in love with the final product. Myra gave a wonderful tutorial, so I will skip the details and just let you know the areas that I lived up to my wonderful nickname :)

For the base Myra used a foam board that she cut into a wreath form which is probably a more cost effective way to do it, but finding objects the right size to trace just seemed like too much trouble to me. So I ran off to Hob Lob and picked up the biggest grapevine wreath I could find.

The above picture was taken when I realized I was down to 2 pine cones and 2 just wasn't enough... I was determined to finish the wreath right then, but it was a very damp evening and all of the pine cones in the yard were closed up tight. After googling how to dry them I found that you could put them in the oven for 30 minutes or in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time, but was warned that they catch fire easily... of course, 30 minutes was too long for Quick Fix Mama to wait, so microwave it is! I was RELENTLESSLY ridiculed by QF Husband for making the entire house smell like a camp fire. (I didn't start a fire, but it did start smoking LOL)

Once finished I decided it was too big and needed something to take up space in the middle. So I took floral wire and wrote out Love with it... interestingly enough, my awful handwriting still exists when I'm not even writing.  

Then I wrapped it with some Jute that I had laying around. It took wrapping it three times to cover 98% of the wire. I learned that it is best to keep twisting the same direction the whole time and to keep the twists the same distance apart throughout. It would have made for a much cleaner look.

TaDa! The final product... 3 weeks in the making

Thanks for the great tutorial, Myra!

Sorry about the picture quality... I'm still learning about the settings and the lighting in our rent house doesn't help much. I'm off to read up on pitcure taking tips. Have a great day!

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