Spooky Goings On... How To Make a Wreath

It's October and nearly time for Halloween. It seems to be getting bigger and bigger each year, though we sadly don't get any trick our treaters down our street. I thought I'd make a wreath with this lovely  spooky fabric, bright orange with black pumpkins and black with sparkly silver cobwebs. I also picked up some orange ribbon with black bats.

I had some black pipe cleaners in with my felting stash so borrowed them for this project too and some small wire clippers so I could clip the pipe cleaners in half to use as wires to connect the fabric to the wreath base.

I scrunched up a strip of orange and black fabric and tightly wrapped a pipe cleaner around it.

The wreath base I used has 2 concentric circles, so I connected my little wrapped 'bows' each circle, packing them in quite tightly.

To sit on my wreath and add the spookiness, I wanted a big spider. I made 2 pom poms, tied them together and trimmed the bigger one to make it flatter underneath. I used my glue gun to stick 4 long pipe cleaners to be my spiders 8 legs and 2 large googly eyes. I used yarn to tie the spider to the wreath and hid the knot under the fabric 'bows'.

A long piece of ribbon tied to the frame as a hanging loop and a few more pieces to make bows. I'm really pleased with how it's turned out.

It's actually quite heavy, the frame I used was 14 inches, so quite big.

I thought as I'm talking Halloween, I'd show you these lovely pumpkins and gourds, all different shapes and colours, they make good decorations.

Anyone else making any halloween preparations?

Take care
xxx

Christmas ribbons and more ribbons!

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my last post and thank you to everyone kind enough to follow my little blog - you all make me so happy :)

I can feel that tingle of excitement welling up in my tummy... Christmas is coming. I'm even getting excited and warm fuzzy feelings from some of the Christmas ads. I love the John Lewis snowman, so romantic, and the Tesco ad with the hubby fixing the drink, I'm even enjoying the Argos aliens who take everything so literally - I like when the dad knocks the snowman's arm off :)

Imogen has started her countdown. Every morning she rubs out the number and chalks in the new one... eek... 40 days... can you imagine, how will I get to Christmas Eve without bursting!!

I get like this every year, it's all the anticipation. I get so excited at the thought of giving my gifts and watching everyone's face light up. It's the 'familiness' of it all - love it so much!

We don't put our Christmas decorations up ourselves, the Christmas elves come and do it for us (this is where my husband would be saying 'I wish'). When we drive past other houses with Christmas lights Imogen usually comments how she hopes we're next on the list. It's so exciting for her to come downstairs and see the winter wonderland. Imogen's 10 now so we're trying to hold onto the last bit of magic, though our boy's 24 and he knows it's all magic... they just forget for a few years during the teen years :)

So, to the ribbons.

I bought a couple of polystyrene hoops last week, and I have so many ribbons... so... Christmas wreaths.

A bit time consuming, but I think they look effective, use up ribbon odds and ends (fabric too) and are just so simple to make.

Don't be fooled into thinking I'm doing a nice symmetrical design, ha... ! I don't even try after the first few :)

Here's the back, the polystyrene is almost covered

Reds, greens and golds, very traditional

I found some pretty Christmas ribbon with lots of Father Christmas heads.

It doesn't get to stay up there yet, the elves will come and put it up with everything else when they come.

Take care
xxx