Recently I was telling a close friend that I needed to give her a housewarming gift. She mentioned that she would love a wreath for her front door, which I told her I would happily make. In the meantime, New Canaan Moms contacted me about a blog post on a DIY wreath (perfect timing!) as a spring refresh for a front door – so here is a look at where I shopped and how I made her wreath.
Typically I love to work with fresh flowers, but for obvious reasons they are not ideal for a door wreath. Dried flowers don’t work well either, as I have found them to fade and dry out even further. So the best option is silk flowers, which can appear very realistic when used correctly.
I sent my friend three pictures of wreaths from Frontgate, mainly to determine the style in which she wanted. She was flexible with colors, so I *very* loosely based her wreath on the picture she liked the best, below:
This wreath had flowers on top, but mainly greenery on the bottom. It was a little less structured than some of the other examples I sent her.
On to shopping! I went to Michaels in Stamford and chose a 24 inch grapevine wreath as the base. They have a huge selection of silk flowers (a good amount of their flowers are usually on some kind of sale), and I found many pretty options. In fact, I couldn’t stop grabbing flowers. Pinks and corals were jumping out at me, so I went with that color palette and chose those that I thought looked most realistic.
Once I got home, I realized that the wreath had a slightly funny shape – but I knew I could fix that with the positioning of the flowers, to even it out. The tools I used were a pair of heavy scissors and my floral clippers. A wire cutter is another good option.
First I assembled my flowers together so I could really get a good look at what I had and figure out how I wanted to start. Some of the flowers came as single stems, and some came in small bunches that I separated into single stems. The names of the flowers I picked up: bush peony, cabbage rose, dahlia, poppy, magnolia branch, and ivy and hanging fern for the greenery.
I cut each stem about 3-5 inches long, nothing was measured or exact. I wasn’t sure if I was going to need any green wire (which you can find at Michaels as well) to wire the stems to the wreath, but I never used any.
This stem length was easy to push through the grapevine – some of them simply pushed through and held easily on their own, due to the tightness of the vine. Other stems I wrapped around a piece of the grapevine to make it a bit more secure – see picture below. You can see the bottom green stem wrapped around a piece of the grapevine. If I gently tugged on the flower and it didn’t budge, I was satisfied and moved onto the next flower. If you would like, you could also use a hot glue gun to secure the flowers further.
I built a base mainly of larger flowers, and added some of the smaller ones in later.
I essentially covered a bit more than half of the wreath in flowers. Some of the flowers were flush with the grapevine, and others (like the poppies) I tried to not push in as tightly to give it some depth. I also only used the bush peonies (the cream flowers with yellow centers) on the left side of the wreath. It wasn’t intentional initially, but I liked how the flowers on one side weren’t exactly the same as the other side.
Next, the greenery. I had to use restraint with this. It was very easy to keep adding, but I knew it would start to look too busy, so I tried to keep it more subtle. I added some to the top and sides, and tried to give the greenery movement.
I kept the greenery stems longer, and they went in at an angle and followed the curve of the wreath (most of the other flower stems went straight in or at a slight angle).
Lastly, I added the peach magnolia branches (again, at an angle) and had them popping out in different directions. This gave the wreath further movement and a bit more of a natural look, which I think my friend was going for. I put the wreath on my door so I could really see what I liked and what I wanted to change. The great thing about faux flowers is that they are so easy to manipulate. I changed the direction of some and fixed the greenery so it had the right flow.
And the finished product is below. It is not something I normally do, but I really enjoyed making it. It is hard to gauge how long it took to make as I was interrupted by the littles multiple times, but if you have uninterrupted time, I’d say you could put it together in probably 1 to 1.5 hours. Happy Spring and happy wreathing!!
