Not Just for Christmas Anymore

Do you know what I’m talking about? Remember that it’s under $10 holiday decoration day today?!? Does that help? When I told Michael that I was making a wreath for Halloween I was met with “But it’s not Christmas.” Obviously he’s not on Pinterest. I’ve pinned so many wreath ideas that I love on Pinterest that I will either need to have doors added to our house or switch out my wreath every few days. Oh the problems of a DIYer. Today’s project is, you guessed it, a wreath!

For years now, I’ve had a love of the argyle pattern and I’m so excited that it’s coming back. Last week I went to Target for some $1 socks. Okay, I didn’t go for that, but while I was there I had to check them out. I may have freaked out a little when I saw the argyle pattern socks! I now have socks that coordinate with my new Halloween wreath! Are you ready to take this project on? Let’s do this!

Step one was the wreath form. Sure, you can buy them at JoAnn, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc, but they are $5 and there went half of my budget. No. Thank. You. Have you seen the wreath form pins on Pinterest? One I saw was an aqua noodle and the other was copper pipe insulation. On one trip to Menards I found the pipe insulation and it was on sale. Score!

This is enough to do four small wreaths or 2 larger ones. Double score! All I needed now was duct tape. You might have this laying around your house and we probably should, but I got a roll of it anyway and hid it in my craft room labeled it as Amy’s

So, this is pretty easy peezy. You use the duct tape and put the ends together. Like Bristol helped me do here

Full disclosure, this form was actually for another wreath I made, but Bristol has adopted it as his bed and therefore it is no longer a wreath (see the picture here on our facebook page). I may try another one like that and share it with you later. The form for this wreath was the same, but I took another length of pipe insulation and wrapped it around the outside so this was a little more flat than round…and I forgot to take a picture of it (sorry) so you’ll have to picture this as a little circle inside of a larger circle. Then I took some black yarn like this one and played with Bella rolled it into two balls. It was easier to use that way – until I dropped it and Bella and Bristol chased it across the floor. Around and around it went and I’m not going to lie, it took a little while. Say…the season premiers of Two and a Half Men and Hawaii 5-0. Once the entire thing was covered in black yarn (it only took half the skein) I started cutting out orange diamonds for the heart of the argyle pattern. I used a rotary cutter, but you could just as easily use scissors if you don’t have a rotary cutter. From top to bottom these are 2 1/2 inches and from side to side they are 1 1/2 inches.

I wasn’t sure how many I needed so I laid them all out on the wreath and counted. 26 was the magic number for my wreath

I wanted to make sure that the triangle would stay on, so I glued them all down. I used hot glue, but Alene’s tacky glue would work swimmingly too. The first few triangle I glued have a little dot in each corner, then either got lazy or more efficient (not sure which yet) and started gluing sides. It was taking forever to get the hot glue to not go everywhere when I was doing dots. I think if I had to do over, I might use tacky glue just for that fact…and I burnt my fingers.

Twenty six orange diamonds and four burnt fingers later, they were done! The other thing that makes the argyle patter is the lines through the diamonds. I wanted them to really stand out, so I picked a white yarn for that pop. I glued the end of the yarn to the back of the wreath and started wrapping. I found that it was helpful to get the lines I wanted if I wrapped every other diamond and then went back and filled in the blanks. Notice that Bristol is still hanging around and very intrigued by the whole process. Also notice that we desperately need to get rid of that carpet!

Oooo, it’s starting to look so argyley (new word people, write it down). Then repeat the whole white-yarn-wrapping step again, but go the other way making this splendid wonderment

Anyway, I added a ribbon just to hang it for pictures, because I’m not sure where my wreath hanger is right now. Can I just say how giddy I am about this?!? It’s frightening actually, but “that’s what I am and that’s what I care about”. Any fellow Tommy Boy fans out there?

Breakdown:

• Pipe Insulation – $1
• Duct Tape – $1
• Black yarn – $2.50 at Wal-Mart
• White yarn –  $2.50 at Wal-Mart
• Orange felt – $.30 at Hancock Fabrics
• Tacky glue – $2 at Hancock Fabrics
•  Scissors – $1 at Dollar Tree
•    Total – $10.30

I know I went 30 cents over budget, but I’m guessing you have scissors at home and won’t need to buy them. Plus this is enough to make two wreaths so it’s really more like $5.25 each right?

A disclaimer: the homemade wreath form doesn’t have as much structure as a foam one you would buy so sometimes the shape gets a little wonky, but nothing that can’t be fixed.

Talk back to me! What do you think? Are you, like Michael, a Christmas wreath only person? Do you have a love of a certain pattern like I do for argyle (and damask)? If so, head over to our facebook page and take part in the poll. Oh and if you like me, please like me on facebook too. I’m toying with ideas of how to celebrate when I get to 100 fans on facebook (we’ve got a way to go people). Do you have ideas?