Braided Wreath Tutorial ~ Guest Post

I am so delighted to be a guest blogger here at Wildflowers and Whimsy! This is my very first time guest blogging, so hopefully I'll do it right. :) To tell you a little about myself, I'm a single mom who has the fortune of being able to work out of the home as a freelance writer. Back in October, I started my own blog called The Prairie Patch. It mainly deals with prim decor, and since I have such eclectic tastes, I started up All Thumbs Crafts. I'm excited to be artistic and creating again, and the All Thumbs blog is where I share my latest crafting experiments. My other blogs are: Craft Supplies Sales and Resources, North Pole Diaries, Handmade Teddy Bears and Raggedies, and the Sunburnt Cow Handmade Shop. The latter two feature various artisans who sell handmade items. I also have two link parties: one on the Prairie Patch, which deals with prim decor items and goes from Sundays to Wednesdays, and the Sunburnt Cow, which runs from Wednesdays to Sundays. The Sunburnt Cow link party is slightly different from other link parties in that I encourage those who have blog posts revolving around handmade items they have for sale to link up. This party can be anything handmade; it's not strictly in the prim/old fashioned look. I'm also going to be holding regular contests on these two blogs to discover new handmade shops, so if you're interested, please check back regularly! For my first guest blog post, I'm going to share with you a braided wreath tutorial.

I love to use non-perishable trash in my crafts, so I try to use cardboard and packaging whenever I can. Since I don't have any wreath forms, I decided to make my own out of a lasagna box.

I'm fortunate enough to have a second hand store in my town that sells clothes dirt cheap. I often buy these clothes for craft projects. Some of them have those annoying shoulder pads in them, and instead of throwing them out after I've cut up the various shirts, I save them for future use. And looky here - I found a purpose for them!

I mod podged and sandwiched them between the two wreath frames since I wanted a little oomph to the wreath.

I knew the wreath wasn't going to be totally flat since I was using three different kinds of jeans braided into one long strand.

This strand was probably around 30 feet, but yours doesn't have to be that long. I initially used it as a tree garland for a homespun type of Christmas.

The first time I did this type of wreath, I mod podged the wreath form and then slowly wrapped it around. The second time I did it, I found I didn't have to do that. I did put a clothespin at the beginning of the strand so it wouldn't unravel. If you're concerned about the wreath form showing through, rap the braid around a couple times - like I did in my first wreath - or put glue some fabric on the wreath form and wrap the braiding around - as I did on my second wreath. Speaking of my second braided wreath, here it is:

As you can see, I embellished each wreath with two painted stars. The first wreath had stars I cut out from cardboard. The second wreath had wood star shapes that I got from Hobby Lobby. Since I like the homespun country look, I tied the stars to the braided wreaths with raffia. I originally did this because I didn't think the star shapes could stay glued on to the braided surface since it was kind of bumpy, and I actually liked the look. Looks more homespun, don't you think?! Plus, if I wanted to change up the embellishments, I could easy cut the raffia and tie something else onto the wreath. Since I love braiding so much, I also tried my hand at braiding a very long (and I do mean very looooooonnnnnggggg) strand of yarn to wrap around one of those straw wreath forms. Someone gave me a bunch of yarn, so I was able to use a lot of it up doing this pretty, spring wreath:

It's pretty as is but, like the braided jeans wreaths, you can jazz it up by tying various embellishments to it.

I hope you've enjoyed this braided wreath tutorial. Thanks so much to April for inviting me to be a guest blogger. I really appreciate it, April. :)

How cute is that? The yarn one and the red, white, and blue one is my favorite.

Here are a couple of my favorite projects she has done:

Burlap Frames

Paper Mache Easter Eggs

Thanks for guest posting!  Be sure you check out her blog!