The real flowers might not have sprung yet, but that’s no reason to delay the celebration of spring. Especially when you can make your own flowers for about $5.
Seriously.
This felt flower wreath was constructed with the following:
- a few sheets of felt ( .29 cents each)
- a hot glue gun (stashed in a craft bin somewhere)
- a twine wreath ($4.99)
- any accessories of your choice (The bird? Total impulse buy. I’m susceptible to buying anything colorful come late winter. It’s a desperate time.)
When I first started making the felt flowers, I made my life much harder than necessary. I used glass jars and bowls in various sizes to trace circles on the felt for the pattern. It worked just fine, but after I grew weary of endless tracing and cutting around my pencil marks, I just started cutting circles out of the felt, freehanded. And that ended up being much nicer because not only did I get to skip the tracing step, the inconsistencies in the freehanded circles made for much more life-like flowers.
Less work + better results = winner.
To make flowers out of the circles, cut a spiral pattern into the circle, starting at one edge and spiraling all the way around until you reach the center. A variation of wide spirals and narrow spirals worked well for me – again with the natural inconsistencies. Once your spiral is cut, start at one end and keep rolling through the circle, forming a flower shape as you go, until you reach the end. Seal the edge with a dab of hot glue. I also started some flowers in the center and worked from inside out rather than outside in; changing the rolling method will change the shape of the flowers and keep the wreath from looking too uniform and unnatural.
Once your flowers are finished, decorate the wreath with as many or as few as you see fit, attaching them with hot glue as you go. This wreath actually started with a lot (a LOT) more flowers. It was almost completely covered. But it just didn’t look right to me, so I pulled a bunch off and played with it until it looked best. That’s the nice thing about working with hot glue and branches – once it cools, it’ll pull right off without any major damage to the wreath or the flowers. So don’t be afraid to make a mistake! This is a flexible endeavor.
And really, what’s better than flexibility, intended imperfection, and early spring flowers? That’s about as good as it gets until the day the heat doesn’t turn on automatically and it’s light outside after 5pm.
