Deco Mesh Winter Wreath (Step-by-step directions)

A lot of my ideas stem from something I see on Pinterest or TV, or stores. I have always wanted to have wreaths to hang on my front door for the Holidays. Now that we have our own house, I figure its the best time to do it. I found these pictures on Pinterest and wanted to do something similar to them. 

However, this picture did not give directions for how to make the DecoMest Wreath. I had created a wreath for our wedding reception using Burlap, so I thought I could probably handle it, but I am glad that I searched to find a tutorial to help me. I came across this tutorial Clumsy Crafter to help me get started. I really just used it for the starter steps on the Wreath. After that, I kind of made my own rules to make it work the way I wanted it to!

The supplies I used were:

*Wreath (with pipe cleaners), these are available at craft stores with or without the pipe cleaners

*Hot Glue Gun & Extra Glue

*DecoMesh (I used two rolls)

*Ornaments

*Tinsel

*Deco Tubing Ribbon(Not Pictured here) 

*Scissors

*And Possibly extra Pipe cleaners (I didn't have these, however, they would have probably been helpful!)

I purchased all of these items after Christmas last year and got them between 60% and 80% off. 

Because of that, this project cost me about $12! Be on the lookout for those after Christmas sales!

And, really the only thing you have to have is the wreath and the DecoMesh. You can add whatever you would like to it, make it your own!

I began by bunching up the Deco Mesh to attach it to the wreath. 

Then I attachted the DecoMesh to the Wreath Frame with the pipe cleaner. And started moving around the wreath attaching.

I did this all the way around the wreath, however, I did not measure, which is the beauty of DIY projects, it doesn't have to be perfect or exact! 

I left between 4 and 6 inches between the pipe cleaners to add fullness to the wreath.

I went around attaching another layer to the pipe cleaners giving it more fullness. 

I went around a third layer on the outer layer of the wreath adding to the fullness. 

I moved onto the inner part of the wreath. Doing the same thing. I had two different kinds of DecoMesh that I had purchased to give the wreath some more character!

After going around three times, this is what I had achieved. I had to fluff it out some more, but over all, it looked pretty good. 

There were a few bare spots so I cut some pieces and pipe cleaner-ed them into place to fill those voids. 

After filling the voids, I had a much fuller looking wreath. 

Here you can tell the difference in the two Types of DecoMesh. One has more of a shine to it, you can mix them together like I did, or use just one type. Totally your preference.. Remember, make it your own!

I then went back and added some tinsel to it to give it another dimension of texture. I also used the pipe cleaners to attach the tinsel. 

After the tinsel was strung and the DecoMesh fluffled again.

Because I decided to used a Green Wreath Frame, I wanted to add some green and had purchased this Deco Tubing Ribbon after Christmas last year ( I figured I'd use it on something!) If you like things to be super matchy-matchy, then I would suggest getting the same color wreath as your DecoMesh. 

 I attached it with the pipe cleaner and just wound it around the wreath until I had the pop of green I wanted. 

After I had it all wrapped around, I  tied it to the back of the frame.

Then I placed the ornaments on the wreath to see where I liked them. 

And after I figured out where I wanted them, I hot glued them right onto the DecoMesh. 

After I got it home, I decided that I wanted to add a bow to the bottom on the wreath. I used some blue Deco Mesh Ribbon that I had left over from my wedding. It fit right in with the colors of the wreath. 

DecoMesh is difficult to make into a bow, so if you have never made a bow before, I wouldn't make your first one using DecoMesh. 

I started out making it "bow" like.

I kept wrapping it around. 

I gathered the ends together and glued it down to hold it into place. 

I wrapped a small piece around to create the illusion of a bow, and added some tails to it to complete the bow. 

Glued it right on!

Added a pipe cleaner hanger (I bought some tinsel pipe cleaners at the Dollar Tree. $1 for a pack of 45)

I wrapped it around to be sure it was secure! 

Ta-da! All finished! Can't wait to be able to hang it up, and it will work all winter because of the Silver, Blue and Green! :)

My biggest caution is to be sure that everything is securely attached before you pick the wreath up, you don't want anything to fall off and break.

Wedding DIY

Wedding DIY

Here are images of several of the DIY projects that I used for my wedding. I had so much fun doing all these DIY projects, and the best part was that I got to spend extra time with some of my wonderful bridesmaids!

To make this Just Married Sign, I used some wood laying around. This would was extremely weathered as it was used as a pen for 4-H animals the last 17 years! They were 1x6s but really any board will work. And I used some white exterior house paint we had and painted them on. The hardest thing was spacing the letters out right! So this one was a no cost to me project!

These chalkboard were painted with Acrylic Paint (my favorite paint to work with) and then Valspar Chalkboard Paint (Purchased at Lowe's)

I used an old pallet we had laying around to create a sign for our guest to know where our reception was. This is the same wood I used for the Just Married sign, and it turned out great! 

I painted Mason Jars with acrylic paint to match the wedding colors and used them for our center pieces and for my girls bouquets (shown below in gray). I found the tutorial for the best way to paint Mason Jars here, It All Started with Paint, this tutorial was to paint jars with an Ombre effect, but I just used a single color, but it gave me the tips of how to do it! Then I used a nail file and some sand paper to rough up the jars a little, to give them a more rustic effect and coated them with a clear Acrylic spray to prevent them from chipping. 

Each of the bridemaids had their own jar for their flowers, and a wood tag that I made with their name on i. My dad helped me cut the wood into thing slabs or tags and then I used a wood burning tool that I got from Hobby Lobby to help me carve the names into them. I drilled a hole in the top of the tag and attached to the jar with some jute!

This was a super easy decoration, I used Mason Jars left from my moms canning, and I purchased bags of turquoise glass stones from the Dollar Tree (each jar had 1.5 bags of stones in them) and then purchased some bright orange flowers to match my bouquet from Crafts 2000 for $2.99 with 6 flowers on each stem! Pretty easy! The "mat" underneath is scrapbook paper that I had laminated using a laminater that my husbands mom had got me last Christmas, talk about a perfect gift for a crafty nut who will some day be a teacher!! And then the little chalkboard table numbers. I found cute shaped wood pieces at Michaels and then painted them using the Chalkboard Paint from Lowe's. Attached a clothes pin to the back, took the clothes pin apart, inverted it and glued it on. And attacked half a popsicle stick to the bottom of each clothespin to stabilize it. Easy-peezy, lemon squeeze-y.

I saw a picture on Pinterest (where else?) of Pallets used as a backdrop, and LOVED IT!

My dad helped me put this together. All we needed was 4 pallets the same size and in good shape, 6 hinges, a drill , screws and some muscle power.

And Viola! Here it is finished!

In the center of the previous picture, you will notice  this heart. I used small sawn pieces of logs that my dad helped cut, and I used a heart shaped frame from Hobby Lobby. I wrapped the frame in Burlap in case it showed through and hot glue the log pieces right to the burlap. Turned out perfect!

 

Made these cute reserved table signs for our family using Chevron paper in our wedding colors from Hobby Lobby. All I did was cut the paper down from 12x12 to 8.5x11. And formatted how I wanted it to print. Inverted it on one side so it could be read from either side, and printed, easy as pie!

For the Bouquet Toss, I didn't want to through a bouquet of flowers, so I decided to make paper and burlap flowers. I have made paper flowers before, so by this time I was an old Pro! I bought two books from Goodwill for 25 cents a piece and went to town. Not, I have to admit I had no idea how to make burlap roses, but I found a tutorial, The Mamas Girls Club to help me out. I did tweak it because I wanted the roses to be more full and "rose-like", we'll call it. 

Here is the bouquet right before I tossed it!

And the pew bows, I wanted to be made of burlap with a splash of blue. Using the tutorial on Thistlewood Farms, I again tweaked it to fit my needs. And they turned out adorable! I loved the splash of rustic as I walked down the aisle. 

Simple mini wine bottles I got from a friend with some baby's breath and accented with turquoise or orange paper ribbon found at Paper Mart. Paper Mart is a great place to check out. We got a ton of tulle, burlap and other decor items for very reasonable prices!

See that Cards sign? I burned that using my wood burner! Just bought a wood plaque from Hobby Lobby, and went to town!

 And these cute letters are from Hobby Lobby as well, and were just painted with Acrylic paint (what else?) and then I used a staple gun & hot glue gun (just wanted to be extra sure) to attach and hang them with jute!

And my beautiful burlap wreath (I may be partial!). I saw a wreath similar to this at a restaurant while going with a friend to her bridal fitting, and I totally loved it. So I came home and scoured the internet for a tutorial on how to make a burlap wreath. I found one here at My Crazy Good Life . Let me be the first to tell you, if you, or anyone in your family is allergic to burlap, you may want to tackle this one outside! This was so fun to make it was going around and around with the burlap weaving it in and out to make it as full as I wanted it. And I accented it with a chevron bow, using chevron burlap ribbon that I got at Hobby Lobby, it also matched the pew bows at the church! All it too was some hot glue, some wire and a wreath frame. All from Hobby Lobby!


So those are my DIY projects from our wedding. I am sorry I don't have step by step pictures for everything, but my phone died during the wedding planning, and I lost a lot of my photos. I am lucky I was able to come up with these. Thanks to Wed Pics, I was able to find some I had posted right after they were completed!

I cam however give you tips and information if you are interested in any of the pictures I showed! I LOVED DIY-ing things for our wedding. It was so much fun, and not to mention, it was helpful in saving money on our wedding :)

Happy DIY-ing!

It's been a while my friend!

Well hello friends! It has been quite awhile!! Things have changed since my last post, I know 16 months is a terribly long time!! I started student teaching in September of 2013, and was super busy. Graduated with my Bachelors in December of 2013! Here are of few pictures commemorating my graduation!!

I moved back to my home town following graduation.

In February of 2014, my boyfriend proposed

and we began planning a October 2014 wedding.

So needless to say, it has been 16 months, but quite a sixteen months it had been.

But I made a lot of my decorations and things for the wedding and now starting to work on things for our home!

So in the next few days/ weeks, I will be posting some of things I diy-ed for our wedding!!

Here are a few sneak peeks from our wedding!!

Not to mention I DIYed that Just Married Sign in the picture!

DIY Mugs! - From July 2013. I guess I never posted!

How many of you have tried to make a mug using Sharpies and baking it in the oven???
I know I have (twice) and it didn't work either time :(
However, I was on Pinterest (where else?), and saw that if Sharpie Oil-based Paint Markers were used, that it would not wear off!
So I tried it, and guess what it worked!!!!

So here is a list of things you will need:
A mug, plate or piece of glassware you would like to decorate (make sure to wash it prior to decorating it). You can find these at garage sales, the dollar store, on clearance, wherever, I found mine at Big Lots for 80 cents! :)
Sharpie Oil-Based Paint Markers in whatever colors you would like to use. There are fine point and medium, so be mindful of that when you select your markers.
Having a couple q-tips and paper towels around, as well as a cup of water may be beneficial!

Mine is a gift for my Best Friends Birthday! Since I go to school almost three hours from home, it is why I chose to do the shape of MI and a heart where each of us is. Because I wanted it to look as much like Michigan as possible, I printed off a small map of Michigan and cut it out to give me the general shape of it.  So if you are doing something difficult, you may want to do that!

I also found a quote to put on the opposite side. Just Google a quote you like and place it on there.

I made a couple of mistakes along the way, but it was fairly easy to fix, I just got a q-tip wet and used some elbow grease to get of the spots where I messed up.

Also you want to make sure that the marker is fully dry before you touch it against anything, it can smear very easily, but you can also clean it up with a q-tip and water.

 So here are some pictures to show it off!

So here are the markers I used. The Black is a Medium Tip and the Lime and Aqua are Fine Tip. I picked these up at Hobby Lobby. There were $3.79 a piece. I also had a 40% Coupon, so one of them was 40% off. 

So here is the handle. I wanted to do alternating colored hearts with a black dot in between. However, the Black dot does not look like a dot, more like I heart!

So I took a q-tip that was wet and started rubbing to remove the black. 

Here is the mug after I have removed the black dot. Can't even tell it was there!!!

Here is the finished handle.

Here is the side with a quote on it, however you can do whatever you want. I will warn you, you may want to have a couple extra mugs and one as a practice to get a feel for the Paint Marker. They write differently than a regular Sharpie.

And her is my map! Some of the spots are completely perfect, so I did a little more touching up with a q-tip, water, and a paper towel.

After I was completely finished with the mug, I had to let it sit for 24 hours for the marker to fully dry.

After that, heat your oven up to 400 degrees. Place the mug in the oven as soon as you turn it on, that way it can heat up with the oven. Then let it cook in the oven for 40 minutes. Once it has cooked for 40 minutes, shut the oven off, and let the mug cool off. This helps the mug to seal!!

I would also recommend that you wash your mug, especially if it is a gift. That way you can make sure that it will not wash off, even though this is supposed to be a more permanent method of making the mugs.

Happy DIYing! :)