Autumn Basket Wreath
Autumn is my favorite season. I love cozy sweaters, the crunch of leaves under my feet, the smell of frost on the air, the colors of the trees... I could go on and on... So imagine my surprise when all the autumn decor was already going on super sale in the middle of October! There was still a month and a half of autumn to go and the Christmas trees were starting to go on display. (Sigh.) But, it completely worked out in my favor! I was at Michael's looking for a picture frame and came across this big display of autumn related items on sale. I saw a chicken wire basket haphazardly placed among the autumn flowers and was hit with a burst of inspiration and a burning question: does a wreath have to be round? I've seen some really cute door decor that is made from unconventional materials, why not a chicken wire basket? That was enough to get me started. I circled the sale tables and found faux flowers that would look amazing around the outside of the basket and a silvery table-decor pumpkin that I thought would work as the center.
As I intended to hang this on our front porch, I needed to make sure everything was secure. I wasn't really worried about the flowers since they were going to be wound though the chicken wire, but the pumpkin was going to need so modifying to make sure it would stay put. I hot glued some natural colored ribbon to the base, propped it up on some Styrofoam I had from a package that was delivered to lift it closer to the center of the basket, and tied it to the wire frame.
Then I started laying out the flowers. I knew I wanted them in the top right corner and the bottom left, but it took a lot of attempts before I thought it looked right. I wanted to make sure that the wire stems of the flowers weren't visible when the wreath was finished, so it took some finagling to hide everything. The stems on the bottom were hidden by the foliage placed to hide the Styrofoam and for the pumpkin to nestle in, but the top stems were a bit trickier. After some thought (and more flower rearranging) I was able to place flowers inside the basket and along the outer edge, which not only hid everything that was a bit ugly, but also really rounded out the whole wreath.
I have to say, I'm SUPER proud of this project. It came out better than I could have hoped and I'm already looking forward to making more wreath-type-things out of baskets or anything else that might strike me as potential door decor. The possibilities seem endless!