RTW: Initial Wreath TUTORIAL

Reader's Tutorial Week is a week where i spotlight my Reader's fabulous tutorials and introduce you to fellow Craftaholics. it's tons of fun!!

Hey there ::waves hi:: to everyone joining me from Linda's fab blog, Craftaholics Anonymous, my name is Jen J. I am a long time reader of Linda's blog and like to do a little crafting of my own here at the World of Dennifer.  I have a lot more crafts and DandR projects here on my blog, so while you're stopping over, please feel free to look through my archives for some of my past projects and follow me (even grab my button if it tickles your fancy ;o) if you'd like to keep up with my future projects. I am so excited to be participating in the Craftaholics Anonymous Reader's Tutorial Week and I hope you enjoy my wreath tutorial as much as I enjoyed making it...it was inexpensive to make and is so pretty on my door! Feel free to contact me at worldofdennifer@gmail.com if you have any questions about this or any other DIY project on my blog!

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Sooo I finally got a chance to sit down and do my DIY spring {but keeping it up for the summer because I love it so much} wreath for our front door. I got my inspiration for my wreath from Kari over at Rocky Bella - I loved her spring initial wreath so much that I decided to make one of my own (with a few personal touches)...Ta da:

I pretty much just followed her directions, so first I headed to Michaels to get the supplies I needed:

A grape vine wreath (14"), a mini birds nest, some speckled faux eggs, a couple cream colored butterflies and a pretty good-sized bag of green moss. You will also need wide ribbon, a wreath hanger, a glue gun and several glue sticks for this project - I already had all of these things on hand, so I didn't have to buy any of that. Oh and if you want your last initial on the wreath, you will want to grab a wooden letter from Michaels as well - I also had one of these on hand (if you want your letter white, then grab the kind they have that are already painted white - saved me a step)!

Then, I just plugged up my hot glue gun and got to work gluing on clumps of green moss to cover the wreath. You want to make sure you generously cover the wreath, otherwise it'll look a little bare.

Once the wreath is completely covered with moss to your satisfaction, position your initial letter on your wreath and figure out how you want to mount it on the wreath. I put mine up against my door to make sure that the way the letter was positioned on the wreath looked how I wanted it to. Once you figure out where you want the letter, glue it on to the wreath (use a decent amount of glue so that it holds the letter completely). After that, I just glued the faux speckled eggs into the mini nest & glued the nest on the wreath, and finished it off by sticking the butterflies into the wreath where I wanted them (they had wire backings, so they easily stuck into the wreath).

(sorry - not sure why this pic uploaded sideways, but you get the point, no?)

I hung the wreath on the door with a standard wreath hanger, then tied my ribbon so that it covered the hanger & made a bow in the back (on the other side of the door), so that it stayed put...does that make sense?? And that's it. Very, very easy wreath, although I got 2 pretty bad glue burns on my left thumb & right ring fingers - OUCH! I got small blisters & everything. ::humph::  :o/ Ah, the things we do for our DIY projects, lol. But I LOVE LOVE LOOOOVE the way it came out - exactly what I needed to dress up my front door for the spring!

Dizz likes sitting at the storm door and people watching during the day; I like keeping the door open b/c it lets natural light into our living room, so it's a win-win. Anywho, what do you think of my spring wreath?! You likes!? I hope so b/c I loves. 

Here is the cost break down:

Grapevine Wreath = $4

Bag 'O Green Moss = $2.25 (original $4.49, but I used a 50% coupon I had)

Mini Nest = $2

Faux Speckled Eggs = $2

Wired Butterflies = $2

Wreath Hanger; Wide Ribbon; Wooden Initial; Glue Gun and Extra Glue Sticks = FREE (I already had these items on hand)

TOTAL = $12.25

And now that my front door is ready (and my allergies have calmed down at least a wee bit), I can finally say...Happy Spring!!

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