DIY: Dia De Los Muertos Inspired Wreath

Halloween season is upon us and I am excited to continue on with all the celebrations. Most of the fun for me comes from the creative projects that I work on to prepare for Halloween. From my costume, pumpkin carving and most recently, creating a new wreath. I was afraid that I couldn’t top my adorable Monster wreath from last year, but am happy with what is adorning my front door at the moment.

I have been inspired by all things that remind me of the traditional Mexican Holiday, el Dia de los Muertos. Which is a day meant to celebrate the lives of those we have lost and loved. When I think of the Day of the Dead I am reminded of the beautiful altars resurrected by grieving family members filled with flowers, sugar skulls, candles and belongings from the deceased. I hope you enjoy this simple tutorial!

First step is always gathering your materials.

I these beautiful red flowers at the Dollar Tree and grabbed two bouquets for this project. I pulled off each flower from the stem, leaving the green leaves attached to add more color on the wreath.

I found these foam skull ornaments at Michael’s and picked three up at $1 a piece. All the Halloween decorations were already on sale to make some room for the Christmas ornaments, which is CRAZY!

Next stop at Michael’s was the wreath aisle. I always seem to get really overwhelmed here with all of the options. And without fail, I always grab the same one, 18″ green foam wreath. I wrapped this one with black streamer/crepe paper because I didn’t have any ribbon handy.

I played around some with the formation before I started to glue it all down.

And got to gluing! I apologize for the pictures. This project was finished at 11:00 pm. I just had to be working on it while I was watching some scary movies.

And there you have it! The completed wreath that I plan to never take down!

How do you celebrate El Dia De Los Muertos/Day of the Dead?

DIY: A wreath fit for fall

I am so excited to share my newest DIY project. I have decided to decorate for the seasons this year, including the two weeks of fall Central Texas gets each year. I think making wreaths is my new favorite thing to do! Christmas wreath making party anyone? I’ll stop yapping and show y’all my creation.

I followed the amazing tutorial found on pinterest from homemade by jill. Make sure to check out how hers turned out!

 

The original tutorial used loose glitter on cardstock, I decided to cut one step out and found glittered cardstock in the scrapbook aisle. There was glitter everywhere!

I cut out a leaf shape from each color. This actually proved a little harder than I thought it would! I ended with a total of 72 leaf shapes, 18 in each color. I could not figure out a way to make each leaf the same shape. I decided to accept it and it was actually really helpful that they were not identical once I started placing them on the wreath form.

The next step was to pop in season 3 of Friends and watch the “We were on a break” episode on repeat. Oh and also to heat up my hot glue gun and get to work. I started off with all four colors in a row and filled in the rest.

This was seriously so quick to do. I think I spent about 5 minutes to get to that point.

And then I decided to start the other way. I followed the original tutorial here because I really like the effect of it meeting at the top.

After gluing all the leaves around the wreath form and wiping my eyes and finally watching the next episode, I glued on the bow. I decided to buy a pre-made bow because my bow making abilities are just as bad as my leaf cutting abilities. Also, I fell in love with this glitterful bow! And I feel you can never have too much glitter, although my carpet my disagree.

I borrowed the wire from the bow and made a little loop to make the wreath a lot easier to hang. Now my wreath holder won’t damage any of the leaves!

Et Voila! Here is the finished product! I love how much sparkle is on my door right now!

A la instagram!

This was such an easy and inexpensive project. It was also a lot of fun! I spent about 2 hours, most of which were spent cutting the leaves. It cost a total of $15 to achieve this look since I already owned the hot glue gun and the wreath holder that I purchased at the dollar tree. Each piece of cardstock was $2 which is a little pricey in my opinion but totally worth it to cut out the extra step and the glitter did not fall off as much as the fine glitter usually does. The wreath was purchased with a 50% off coupon thanks to the Michael’s app (LOVE this app).

I wish this could stay up longer but I am excited for my upcoming Christmas wreath! I hope y’all enjoyed this as much as I have! I can’t wait to share the other things I have been working on!

Til then, hope everyone is having a great week!