The Year Round Wreath

Okay, I lied...it's not really a wreath.  I suppose it's more a door hanging.  Regardless, I created this Pinterest inspired  door hanging and LOVED it.  I saw the picture on Pinterest and sort of just made up how they did it.  I'm sure there's an original tutorial floating around the world wide web somewhere...but here's what I've got.

 

I don't have any pictures of me creating this bad boy because I made it a few months ago when I was anti-blog.  But it's pretty easy and straightforward, so really pictures aren't necessary.  It's really just a time consuming pain in the butt more than anything else.

First, I started with a cardboard N from JoAnn's.  Similar to the R I used for The Big R project. Here's a pic of the cardboard R so you know what I'm talking about:

Then I grabbed a few other supplies:
- Twine
- Hot glue gun with a few sticks of glue
- White Glue
- Foam Brush
- Ribbon
- Scrap fabric for my flowers

I started by hot gluing the twine to the back of the N on one end - just basically to adhere it to the N.  I also hot glued a small strip all the way around the bottom of the N and attached the twine all the way around (so it wouldn't slip off the end as I started wrapping)  Then I brushed glue onto the N on all sides, about an inch at a time.  Once I had my glue brushed on, I just slowly and carefully wrapped the N, trying not to miss any places.  Every couple of inches I put another dab of hot glue on the back of the N to hold my twine into place.  My thought process was that I needed something that would immediately hold the twine in place so it wouldn't all unravel and white glue takes a while to try.  However, the hot glue can be a bit goopy and doesn't hide as nicely as the white glue, so that's why I only used it in small glops on the back of the N where it would be hidden.  There may be a few tricky parts where the twine doesn't quite line up on your letter, so you really just have to play around with it.

Here's a close up of the wrapped twine.  I had to get a little creative to get the twine to cover every bit even though it wasn't perfectly lined up.

Once I had the whole letter wrapped, I made sure to finish it off with another glop of hot glue on the back so the whole thing wouldn't unravel before the white glue dried.  Then I used white glue to attach a ribbon to the back of the N to hold it onto the door.  I've found that sometimes hot glue won't hold stuff for as long, so I felt like the while glue was the best option.  I also covered the exposed tops of the N by wrapping the twine around the edge of the top section and getting it into a smaller and smaller circle until every bit of cardboard on the top was covered.  I added some extra white glue to the exposed ends to make sure they wouldn't unravel.

For the flowers, I just used some scraps of cream fabric and found a fabric flower tutorial online.  Basically you take a long strip of cream fabric and twist one end of it so it's skinnier.  Then you just start rolling it around, and let it get a little looser as you go so that it opens up like a flower.  I made sure to hot glue it together as I went so that it wouldn't all unravel on me.  It took a few tries to get flowers that I liked, but I think they turned out pretty good.  Once I had a few good ones, I just glued them onto the N.  Finally, glue on a bow and you're done!

Make sure everything can dry overnight before you try to hang it on your door.  I've had mine up for a few months and it's still in great condition.  It's also really light weight and shouldn't scratch up your door paint (like our Christmas wreath did!).

Good luck!