It's a Crafty Christmas! DIY Yarn Wreath

I love Pinterest! It has been so inspiring to me, especially all of the DIY ideas posted on there.  Every once in a while, something I like is from an Etsy shop, like this wreath at alexandranoel for $45.  I have seen similar yarn wreaths other places on the web and on Pinterest, so thought they must not be too terribly difficult to make, and for cheaper than I found on Etsy.  I was right!

So in honor of the Christmas season, I decided to make a yarn wreath in red/white, with felt poinsettias in both red and white.  Here is a list of the materials I used:

• Red Heart brand yarn (the super saver kind) in both winter white and burgundy.  I picked both spools up for $2.39 each on sale.
• Felt, in both "new cardinal" and white.  I chose felt from the fabric section, so paid a little more... I also bought way too much since I hadn't planned out what type of flower I wanted to create.  The felt I bought ended up costing about $10 total.  I could have spent less than $5.  I think this type of felt looks much better than the $0.30 sheets in the craft section.
• Berry spray from the floral department, on sale for $0.99
• Wreath- I found a 14 inch straw wreath for $2.99.  I picked this one because it was the only 14 inch wreath they had.  I left it wrapped in the plastic, and even then it was difficult to get my yearn to stay where I wrapped it.  Lumpy straw = no!

So even with my gigantic felt purchase, it still cost less than $20.  I am annoyed that I bought so much felt (I am always afraid I won't have enough), because I could have done this project for about $13 or less.

Basically, I sectioned off my wreath and drew lines, in order to try to make my stripes similar in size.  I am not going to show pictures of how to wrap the wreath, because you literally just wrap it.  At first I did just a single layer of yarn, and it looked awesome (very smooth), but when I switched to the white yarn, it didn't cover as nicely.  Next time I might spring for nicer yarn that is a little thicker in weight.

Hint on wrapping: I made mini yarn balls, one for each section I wrapped... I felt this helped a lot, because the wrapping is time-consuming enough without getting your yarn in a knot.  I also used hot glue to hold the yarn in place each time I began a new color... just a dab to make sure it was secure.

After I was done wrapping the wreath and fixed all its annoying straw poky-ness, I got to work on the poinsettias   To make the poinsettias, I just free cut out a large leaf shape.  Then I used that as a template to cut out 7 more (8 in total).  I then free cut a smaller leaf shape, and cut 4 total of those.  Here is a picture of a leaf that made up the larger petals on my white poinsettias.  I trimmed the edges to make a more pointed look AFTER I cut out all of the leaves using the template.

Next I made little slits in the bottom of the leaf, and used hot glue to overlap... I was trying to get more depth from the leaves.

Next, I glued four of the large leaves onto a small rectangular piece of felt like so:

And then glued the remaining four large leaves, and four small leaves into this arrangement:

I varied the size of the large leaves, in order to make a larger red poinsettia and two smaller white poinsettias.  I cut a few berries off of the branch I used for the sprigs, and used them as the center of the poinsettia... I finished the wreath off by gluing just a few berry sprigs around the flowers.

And there you have it, a pretty Christmas wreath in a poorly taken photo!