Spicy & Sweet Bachelorette Party!

The rush has finally ended!  I have been working like a busy little bee the past few weeks to prepare for an AMAZING party for one of my dearest and best friends, Beth.  She's getting married at the end of May and I couldn't be happier for her!  She currently lives in West Virginia, but also has a lot of friends in the Nashville area.  So I decided to host her lingerie shower and bachelorette party.  It was a blast to plan and I'm learning how much I LOVE planning parties and being creative with all things entertaining.  Now that it's over, I can finally unveil everything I've been keeping secretive.  For this post, I'll just give you a quick run-down of some of the things we included.  Later on, I'll do an individual post for invite how-tos, game explanations, favor assembly, etc.  For now, enjoy these:

More to descriptions and explanations to come!  I just had to share something!

March Springtime Wreath!

Ok, I PROMISE there will be a surplus of blog posts in a few weeks.  I'm crafting, but keeping things under wraps until after my friend, Beth's shower.

In the meantime...it is March and time for a new wreath for my door!  Remember the heart wreath?  Well, that was fun and cute for February and Valentine's Day, but it was time to move on!  I wanted to do something green for St. Patrick's Day.  However, I didn't want to to be too cheesy or too shamrock-y because I wanted it to be able to stay up later than just for the holiday.  When I was trying to come up with ideas for this wreath, I decided I wanted it to be bright and colorful...something that looked "springy".  I also wanted it to have a lot of texture and fabric, but be different from my February wreath.  So...this is what I came up with:

It was SUPER easy, SUPER cheap, and SUPER fast!

Here's what you'll need if you want to make one similar:

• A foam wreath form.  You could do any shape, any size.  Mine is an 8-inch round. 
• Fabric in color/texture of choice for the main wreath.  I used a remnant of green soft flannel cotton I found in the bin at JoAnn's.  You could also use ribbon.
• Extra fabric scraps for the flower/accent decor.  I didn't have a lot to choose from at home (at least not in the colors I wanted), so I bought this pack of quilting squares for $5.00 at JoAnn's.  
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun
• Straight pins

Here's the steps I took:

1. Snip the end of the fabric in about 1 inch sections.  

 

2.  Grab both sides of the slit, and pull apart to the other end.  Most fabric will naturally tear through in a straight line without a lot of effort. 

When you're done, you should have a bunch of strips like this with beautiful, slightly frayed texture!

3.  Glue down the end of the first strip and wrap around the wreath.  I put a dot of hot glue about every two-three wrap arounds on the back side.  I glued it at a slant so that the fabric wouldn't bunch up in the center.  

When you get to the end of one strip, glue it down, then start the next strip in the same spot you ended the first. 

4.  Continue wrapping around with the strips until you get all the way around the wreath form.

5.  Continue wrapping and gluing strips until you've covered all the white foam.  Then, I pulled up the ends on the back and snipped the excess.  

6.  I pulled out all the scraps to decide.  Here were my choices:

I narrowed it down to these three.  I added a fourth later because I still needed some more "fluff" to make my flower look right and cover the pins. 

7.  Cut each square in two pieces.  It doesn't matter if you use a straight pair of scissors or pinking shears.  I used two squares of each pattern.  

8.  Fold each piece like an accordion.  This reminded me of making paper fans when I was little.  :o)  

9.  Stick a pin through the end and just stick all the little fans in a cluster on your wreath.  This part took the longest, because I played around with the different arrangements, fluffing them in different ways, making sure the pins were covered, etc.  I chose to cluster mine off-centered.  

10.  For the hanger, I just used an extra scrap of fabric and hot glued it really good.  

Here's my flower cluster:

And my final wreath:

I like the way it turned out, but I may add a little more "something"...not sure what yet.  

Hope you like it!  This can definitely be modified for other holidays/months/themes with different colors and fabrics.  Have fun with it!

Look forward to my April wreath for Easter.  I'm SOOO excited about it and it is SO easy and fun!

PS...This is my first time ever, but I'm linking up to Under the Table and Dreaming.  Head on over for some more great ideas!