Fun for the Fourth!

I absolutely love decorating for holidays. Holidays just warm my spirit and give me something to look forward to. Whether it is Valentine's Day or Christmas or the Fourth of July, holidays mean being with those you love (even if its being with them through a card or a text rather than in person, especially if you live with a first responder like me). 

When I was growing up, the Fourth of July meant week-long parties and lots of friends, family and fireworks. I always looked forward to the Fourth of July because we got to stay up late and run around with the other kids on my block until my dad realized what time it was. Then, we would wake up and go to brunch with the whole block and stay up late all over again. Probably some of my best summer memories come from this time of year.

I've recently fell in love with making wreaths, because they are so simple. And the messier you make them, the better they look somehow. When I was on a trip to pick out fabric for my friend's baby shower present, I found burlap deco mesh on sale! (Our philosophy growing up was that nothing should be bought unless it was on sale... right mom?). I saw the burlap and the project formed in my head: wait, I have blue from my Blue Line Wreath AND omg mom just bought me red deco mesh at a garage sale for cheaper than cheap! HOW PERFECT. And so the project formed in my head.

I believe in fates and how these items all came to me speaks to that a bit... haha ;)

I did the rolled deco mesh wreath before (like my blue line wreath) so I knew I wanted to try something different. I essentially followed a video like this, but the main difference between mine and hers is that I used pipe cleaners which are not as easy to see through the mesh. I started out with a metal wreath form:

And then I added my pipe cleaners. I had blue from my old project but you could use any color it really doesn't matter. 

I honestly wish I wouldn't have put the pipe cleaners on first because I didn't end up liking the spacing and had to take them off and re-do the pipe cleaners anyway. Essentially I gathered large sections of the burlap mesh together and tethered them to the wreath form with pipe cleaners. About 9-12 inches of burlap was plenty. Any more and the loops were too big but any less and the loops were too neat and didn't look how they should.

Once I got done throwing the burlap mesh in the wreath, I decided it was not enough; you could see through it and it just looked bare.  At the same time, I did not want to repeat the process with the red and blue because I thought that would just be way too much.  So I combined methods and followed the same ideas from my last wreath that I found on pinterest.

Here it is with just the red

Here is the finished product! I repeated the gather for the blue in opposite corners. I think it gives the wreath enough symmetry (which the OCD in me loves) but still has the messy-deco mesh "I just threw this together" look. I found the star at Michael's for suuuuper cheap, like $1.50 I think. It was a dark blue (and came from the Fourth of July decorations) but it just did not look good with the other colors.  A little spray paint fixed that right up though, and the white looks amazing!

TA-DA!!

I really liked the finished product and really the blue and red remind me of little fire-work explosions.

Check out my Pinterest board for tutorials and new projects I am thinking about making!