A Coastal Summer Wreath

Craft fails. They happen around here more often than I’d like to admit. Occupational hazard, I guess. 😉 When I found out that this month’s Get Your DIY On theme was outdoor decor, my first thought was to make a sign for the front of our house that said our last name and had our monogram on it. Sounds easy enough, right? So I bought my supplies, worked out how I was going to put it together using stencils I made with my Silhouette machine, and started painting away.

Since it’s been a little hectic around here lately, I was multitasking while I was waiting for the paint to dry, and by the time I got back around to pulling up my stencil, it was too late and a bunch of the paint peeled up with it. It was a hot mess. Gah. And of course I had waited until the last minute to do this project and was running short on time, so instead of going out and buying all new supplies, I just started grabbing things from around my craft room in an attempt to pull together some semblance of a project.

One of the first things I came across was last fall’s wreath in my closet. Perfect.

I originally decided to disassemble it just so I could use the wreath form, but when I took off the flowers, they were in perfect shape, so I set those aside too. Using two rolls of aqua ribbon that I was going to return to the craft store but hadn’t yet (yay procrastination!), I wrapped the plain wreath form to give it a bright and cheery color.

While searching my stash, I also found a few yards of lace fabric that we had left over from my sister’s wedding, so I cut some of it into 4″ wide strips and wrapped that around the wreath as well to give it a little more texture while still allowing the aqua color to peek through.

It was still looking kind of plain. I needed something to embellish it with. Fortunately, sitting on the bookshelves in my office was this little $1 frame that was already holding a sand dollar cutout from when I used it in last year’s summer shelf decor. Score!

To attach it to the wreath, I ripped off the little piece that propped it up in the back, and I was able to string some twine through the two little holes where the piece had been attached.

I was then able to wrap the twine around the wreath and tie it on. I added a few of the flowers from my fall wreath using hot glue, used some more twine to hang it up, and I was done!

I mean, it’s definitely not the most elaborate wreath I’ve done, but I’d say it’s not too shabby for just grabbing a bunch of stuff from my craft room and hot glueing it together. 😀

Tip: Sometimes when you have a wreath that has “stuff” on only one side, it wants to hang really lopsided and doesn’t look so cute on the door. I usually take a command strip or two and use them to attach the wreath to the door to hold it in place. Duck tape also works in a pinch. 🙂

It may not have been exactly what I had planned, but I now have myself a brand new summer wreath for a grand total of $0. Yippee! SEE DONNIE– sometimes my craft supply hoarding tendencies come in handy! Just sayin’. 😉

Oh but I’m not the only one summer-ifying the outside of my home lately! My fellow Get Your DIY On co-hostesses have been hard at work as well! Check out their gorgeous and creative outdoor decor projects:

Updating Old Porch Decor, Confessions of a Serial DIYer

DIY Nautical Rope Outdoor Coasters by Krista, The Happy Housie

Summer Deck Refresh by April, House by Hoff

Mason Jar Summer Decor by Mandy, The Hankful House

And if YOU have an awesome outdoor project to share (or you have recently hot glued a bunch of random craft supplies together 😉 ), we hope to see you back this Sunday, June 7th at 7 pm EST to party with us! We can’t wait to see what you’ve been working on! See you then!