DIY 4th of July Wreath

Hi all! I'm Lori, and I blog over at EclecticMamma doing… Well, all kinds of things!

I try to decorate my home, feed my family of three, dress myself and my almost-3-year-old son, and do little things that make life easier—for relatively cheap! (Also relatively cheap on the time front, too, because I work full time…) Currently things are kindof a mess around Chez Eclectic (You still have bits of your Valentine's, Spring, and 4th of July decor all mixed together, right?) but I'm trying to get back into the swing of things after the crazy-busy spring we've had!

Today, I'm going to show you the awesome wreath I made last year, and how to make it yourself!

Disclaimer: This is not a quick project! It took me about a week of evenings, but if you had help, I'm sure it would go faster. I don't regret the time I spent on it, though, because I love how it turned out!

First, what you're going to have to do is bulk up that cheapy wreath, so you can make a big fat flag! The wreath pictured is not the one I used, but the principle is the same. If you have a nice fat wreath form already, you can skip this step, but if you have a dollar store wreath… Click on over here to find out how to fix that sucker up!

I'll wait.

…

Ok! Here comes the tedious part… you have to cut your felt in squares approximately 2 inches by 2 inches. Since felt sheets come in 8x11 (or something) it's not exactly equal… Just fudge the last couple rows and you'll be fine. You need to cut a LOT of squares—I think I ended up using about 7-9 sheets of each color, and if I was going to do it again, I'd use more to fill in the gaps better.

Next, mark off your areas, similar to the way I did it in this diagram:

(If I had thought about it ahead of time, I would have figured out how to do 13 stripes… For mine, I just wanted to make sure I had an odd number.)

Now you're ready to start hot gluing! With your first color (you can start anywhere, obviously, but I happened to start with the first red stripe) pick up a square, and pinch it so the middle is sticking out. Apply just a bit of hot glue to the middle of the square, and press it down into the center of the area you've marked as red. I found it much easier to work from the inside out than to work from one line to the next. Do the same with your next square, placing it about 1/4-1/2 inch away, depending on how full you want your wreath. As you can see, mine's not quite full enough to cover the red felt… But I consider that part of the charm!

For the stars, I borrowed/stole some various-sized pre-cut foam stars from a friend, and just hot glued them on the blue area at the end. To add a hanger, cut a ribbon longer than you think you'll need, and use massive amounts of hot glue to attach it on! I am not kidding about the massive amounts of hot glue—my wreath fell down the first week, and I had to fix it! (By the way, do you just love the hot glue spiderwebs? I know you can get rid of them with a hair dryer, but I don't have one…)

And now you've got an awesome flag to hang on your front door!

By the way, I've also got a pretty awesome (yes, I'm very humble) American Flag/Preamble printable over on my blog… I just hung it up again a couple weeks ago, and I just love looking at it in my kitchen! Or, have you been looking for the perfect piece of metal to make a fabric-covered magnet board out of? I'll show you where to find the right stuff in Home Depot—it took me weeks! There's also my most popular post by far (and it's from only a few months ago!) the cute printable blog planner… Take your pick, but I'd love to see you over at EclecticMamma!