WREATHING HAVOK

There is something magical about a friendly front door.

Like this yellow one...

Or this red one that talks to you...

Or this green dutch door...

If I had a door like this, I would spontaneously break into Disney songs and start talking to wild animals.

Someday I will welcome the world with the perfect front door, but apartment living limits a lot of what can be done.
So I made a wreath.
It's not much, but it was fun, and I think it turned out better than other things I've tried.  I decided to go with a burlap wreath because the base is so versatile and I can just change the embellishments, depending on the season, instead of having to haul around six different wreaths.  Simplicity, people, that's what I'm talkin' about.

Below are my over-descriptive and very precise directions...they are over-descriptive and very precise because I am a large part German and that's how we do it.

You will need:

You can use any size but I liked how the 18" one filled up my door.

I went with the 5" wide burlap but there are narrower ones that also look really good.
I needed one and a half rolls.  Depending on how 'poofy' you want it, you may use more or less.

I chose to run a narrower plum-colored burlap ribbon around mine, with some white magnolias, feathers and greens.
The possibilities are endless.

To attach the embellishments.
I didn't use a glue gun because I wanted to be able to switch out the flowers and ribbon, depending on the season.

To start the wreath, begin by 'securing' one end of the burlap to the frame by weaving it through the tracks.  (There are three tracks on this frame, an inside one (1), a middle one (2), and an outside one (3).   A track is made up by two rails on either side.  You'll need to know this for the next step.  And sorry for being Captain Obvious about this, but for some reason not understanding this was my biggest problem when I was trying to follow tutorials.)

With your left hand, hold the end piece so it doesn't pull out.  With your right hand, push the material through the middle track, about an inch and a half to two inches (not all the way...you are NOT pulling the whole roll of burlap through).

Now, being careful not to pull out the middle 'poof' (yes, that is a technical term) you just made, push the material through the inside track to create your second 'poof,' like this:

P.S. For the next few pictures ignore the fact that the wreath already looks mostly complete.
I forgot to take pictures and had to undo it.

Finally, you will push the material through the outside track, still being careful not to pull on the last 'poof' you made.  This is your first set of 'poofs.'  What you have should look something like this:

You will now repeat this pattern of pushing one and half to two inches of your burlap through the tracks all the way around the frame.  Always start with the middle track, then the inside track, then the outside track.  

When you make the next set of 'poofs,' you will want to hold the last ones you make back with one hand, like this:

See how I am holding the last set of 'poofs' back with my left hand and starting the next set of 'poofs' in the middle track with my right hand?

This gives you more room to make your 'poofs.'  I made three sets of 'poofs' in between each rail division (the wires that run perpendicular to your wreath frame).  There were nine divisions on the wreath I bought so in the end I made 27 sets of 'poofs.'

Hint:  As I'm going along I also keep an eye on the back of the wreath because sometimes in my effort to not pull my last 'poof' out, I leave too much burlap and it creates small loops  on the back that make it look a little messy and use up unnecessary burlap.

After you have done this all around your entire wreath, cut the burlap and tuck the end in the back somewhere so that it doesn't show.  Congrats! You now have your base.  Now comes the fun part--the embellishments.

I wanted to secure the ribbon around my wreath, rather than just wrap it.  You will notice that all around your wreath there are convenient railings hidden among the 'poofs' to attach things to:

To attach my ribbon, I cut 6" pieces of floral wire and ran them through the railings wherever I wanted to secure my ribbon, like this:

I also decided where I wanted to place the majority of my embellishments on the wreath and attached a bunch of 8" wires there.  I wasn't sure how many I would use so I just ran five or six through the railing.  You can always take out the ones that you don't end up using.  It looked something like this:

Hint:  I noticed it helps to bend the end of the wire into an L-shape when you are trying to run the wires through the rails.  Otherwise the wire likes to catch on the burlap.  Then you can bend it back. 

I started my ribbon close to where the embellishments would be so I could hide the start of the ribbon behind them:

Then I just wrapped it around until I came to my first wire, wrapped the wire around the ribbon and twisted it to 'close' it, then trimmed the wires as close as I could to the ribbon.  As a last step I kind up puckered or bent the ribbon up and out, so that it 'swallowed' the wire and you can't see it:

Once the ribbon was attached, I decided how I wanted to place my flowers, feathers and leaves.  I found the easiest way to attach the flowers to the wire was to make a hole in the plastic stem part with a bigger-sized needle or safety pin, like this:

It helped to go through the hole from the front and back numerous times.
Then it was easy to run the wire through it.

I placed my flowers first, running the wire through them, pulling them tight, and then twisting the wire to hold them in place.  I think I used the same wires to attach the leaves.  To attach the feathers, I found the best thing was to wrap the wire numerous times around the bottom, as tightly as I could.  That gave me flexibility to still adjust them a little after the whole wreath was finished.

And there you have it:

I just hung mine on the door with one of those wreath hooks that goes over the door, but you could attach a loop of ribbon or whatever suits your fancy.  

And just to give you an idea of how versatile this wreath is to change, here is what the same wreath looked like at Christmas:

Has anyone else made a wreath lately?  Any interesting variations you've seen or tried?  I'd love to see pictures or hear about them!