Fall Project: Autumn Wreath

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The calendar says it’s officially fall, and some fall-ish stuff finally made it to Texas yesterday! 🙂  Time to start pumpkinfying my house and doing fall stuff.

You can start to get the sense that fall is coming here when the sky color changes. The skies in Texas are a beautiful blue in the winter and it’s on its way. The sunsets are lovely too.

 

I got an email from a fellow blogger a while back talking about fall front porch decor, and when I saw hydrangeas on her front door I felt the need to make an autumn wreath for our house.

I haven’t made a wreath in years, but they are not hard to do, and you can usually make them less expensively than buying one in a store.

I LOVE hydrangeas. They are such a vintage flower, and I’ve always thought they looked like big puffy colorful snowballs. You can affect the color of the blooms by adjusting the composition of the soil.

Blue blossoms are more prevalent in acidic soil, pinkish blooms happen in alkaline soil, and white blooms flourish in either kind of soil.

My great-grandmother grew hydrangeas and always kept us occupied as children by having us drive rusty nails into the soil to keep her blooms blue.

This was back in the day when no thought was given to exposing your great-grandchildren to the possibility of tetanus. We were hard like that. 🙂

 

So I saw the hydrangeas on my blogger friend’s door and decided I needed some too. Making a wreath is not difficult. All you need are:

• A grapevine wreath
• Blossoms of your choice (I used silk flowers)
• Floral wire cutters
• Floral wire and/or tape
• A fall themed sign

Here’s all my stuff laid out on the table:

 

 

I chose muted fall colors for my flowers. I love the rusts and faded greens and browns. I also chose a few accents like cotton blossoms and greenery.

And here’s my little happy fall sign:

 

Begin by placing your flowers on the wreath to get an idea where you want them. Once you are happy with the layout, just use your wire cutters to trim the stems to a workable length.

So that the back of your wreath is not all gangly, cut the stems to a length that can be easily attached to the wreath with floral wire. Flowers usually come with really long stems, so you will want to trim them to a foot or less long.

Then just start poking the stems through the grapevine wreath until you have everything in place. Look for any holes and fill with accents or more flowers.

Secure the stems to the wreath by tucking them into the wreath or attaching them with floral wire. I just wrapped floral wire around after I had all my flowers in place, pulling the stems tightly to the wreath on the back.

Then attach your little fall sign with floral wire.

That’s it! It took me about an hour to make my wreath. I went from this:

To this!

 

And it all cost under $100 to make. By contrast, I saw this wreath this weekend at a gift shop down the road from us. It was $165.

So if your front door needs a taste of fall, give yourself an hour and some of your favorite flowers and make an autumn wreath!

Add some pumpkins to your porch and you are officially decorated for fall! I may or may not overserve myself when buying pumpkins. 🙂

I’d love to see your finished product if you decide to make an autumn wreath. Or how you decorate your front porch for fall. Send me pics!

If you need some fall printables to add to your decor, I’d love for you to visit my Printables Shop. All the fall stuff is in there! If you use promo code BOGO, you can get a free printable with your purchase.

And I’d love for you to follow me on Pinterest!