Cozy Winter Wreath {tutorial}

Yep, you read it right.  Winter.  I'm trying to embrace these colder days as cozy fall days, but when you are elbow deep in Christmas crafts it taking quite a bit of effort,  Especially for a girl that has been known to put up her Christmas decorations on November 1st.  {Its hard not to do when you live up in the snowy mountains of Colorado!} Are you feeling that tug of Christmas too? Here's the perfect cozy day activity.  I highly recommend that Bing Crosby and Hot Chocolate I was talking about earlier.

The first steps is where you are really going to settle in and get cozy. You'll need a wreath form and some yarn.  Any wreath in any size will do.  And if you have yarn all wrapped up in a ball it will be a little bit easier, but not necessary.  I think JoAnn's even has yarn on sale. 

So put on a good movie or watch some football and start wrapping your wreath with the yarn, making sure its tight.  I used a dab of hot glue at the beginning to help hold it in place, and left a little tail, so that I could tie it off when I got all of the way around.  Don't worry about it being perfect!  I even added some extra to make it look even more unperfect. I'll just give you a little warning that this may take awhile.  Especially if you have a larger wreath.  But its a way to feel productive and not so guilty for snuggling up and on a cold fallish night!

Now you can add any embellishments you want.  Felt works really well {and adds to the coziness}for making flowers and thats what I used.  I first cut some wonky stacked circles out of a teal, and then added a little white rose and black button.  Hot glue is your frenemy so watch your fingers!  I had to add red {of course} so I cut some petals and layered them for a poinsetta look.  I then added a bookpage snowflake and a button tied with baker's twine.  I heart the bookpage snowflake.  A lot.  I've been making some garland with them too.  For the garland I've just been using single snowflakes, but I  needed one with some stiffness. 

This will work for any shape, I'm thinking leaves would be fabulous too.  Grab at least 5 torn out book pages and some mod podge and a brush.  

Mod podge the top of your first page and stack the next one on top.   Rub out any air bubbles really well.  Let it dry for a minute, then repeat.  Add however many pages to get the thickness you want. Just make sure to let it dry a little bit between each one, especially if your pages are thin. 

Once your pages are dry go ahead and cut your shape out.  I've talked about my Big Shot before, and if you were curious as to what it was hopefully this gives you an idea.  I had gotten a 70% off coupon at JoAnn's a while back so I used that to get this awesome snowflake.  Of course you can trace out any shape and use your scissors, but I've mentioned before my incompetence with those things.  ;)

It works out perfectly, giving your shape the stiffness of something like chipboard!  

 {on a side note, my walls are not that yellow, but thats what happens when you take pictures at night!}

    I love how my cozy wreath turned out and that it can be a "winter" decoration and can be left up in January.  You know that one winter month that reminds me why I shouldn't rush winter?!

All right peeps.  One last thing.  I've got something very awesome for you for next week.  I've lined up some of my favorite writers to help me out too.  I'm ready for a little peace, and thankfulness and these ladies are going to help us get there. So grab a button, have a fabulous and cozy weekend and we'll see you here next week!

Have you seen these felt heart wreaths from Amy at the Idea Room?  Yeah, me too.  A couple of friends and I were going to get together and make them but we waited too long to get to Joann's and the heart wreaths were all gone.  No big deal we decided to make circle wreaths instead, then we could use them for other holidays.  Then I started cutting out circles to get a head start.  I quickly realized that there was NO way we would be able to cut out as many circles as we needed and even start on these things in one morning.  So we decided to go for squares.  Cutting goes a lot faster when you can use a rotary cutter!

 Here's how it turned out.  Its super cute! I put it on Ivy's shelf in her room.  Our house has seemed so bare without the Christmas decorations and her shelf needed something- and its a little thick to put on a wreath hanger.

This is it close up.  It has more of a flower or petal effect then the circles.  But I also had all of those circles cut out and didn't want them to go to waste. 

I didn't have another styrofoam wreath so I took this wreath I had gotten at Goodwill and wrapped it with twine.

That gave me something to put the pins in to.  I then proceeded to fold all my circles and pin them in.  (You can check out the tutorial at the Idea Room for a visual).

It gets more of a ruffled look. Just for the record I like the circles/ruffly look better but I HATED cutting them out.  I hung it on a mirror with a strip of black polka dot fabric.

I don't have much in the way of Valentine's decoration I'm just not a huge fan but I picked up some black and white papers to redo these letters with.  And thats about it for V-day decor.  I've got a few ideas I just need to do them!