Mesh What?

I have to admit I was never into those wreaths made of mesh - you know the stuff that is all shimmery and big and fluffy? I have seen things like cupcakes and carrots and well it was too much = until I played with it myself. I must admit before you see the final pieces - they are a bit LARGE - like really quite BIG and poofy for my liking but they came out wonderfully. And, quite easy to put together. I made a video for it but wanted to show you the still photos here and some basic steps to making one yourself.

Here are the items you need to get started:

2 metal wreath forms ( or any wreath form you prefer to work with)  scissors, pipe cleaners or wire and mesh. I found these 5 yard spools of mesh at Dollar Tree (bought weeks ago with the idea of making a 4th of July wreath) Best part is the spools are $1.00 each and for the two 24 inch wreaths I used 6 spools per wreath!

Take the pipe cleaners and use them as fasteners - I added them in variations one on the first 2 rows of wires then alternate to the bottom two rows of wires.

Then you make 2 loops and create a bow as shown below

 then you grab that bow and twist it onto your wreath form thats where the wire forms work best. My opinion only....

 I then added little loops or curls to the ends of the pipe cleaners - kind of going for the butterfly antenna look. 

and you keep adding lots of bows all over the wreath - since I used three colors I alternated them throughout and at the top center I added a double bow (4 loops) to finish it off and added some small Americana bows in the center to make it dazzle, again from the dollar store. 

Here's a look at both wreaths on my front door. In my video I made a comment about keeping track of how large you make the bows so that things stay semi cohesive and look good - well as you can see in the wreath on the right I made my red bows way bigger then the others and well the wreaths appear a little different - just because the red dominates the 2nd wreath. So maybe measuring the lengths of mesh before hand would be a real good idea.

This whole project cost me under 20.00 - perhaps maybe 16 dollars total. 12.00 worth of mesh and 4.00 for the two 24 inch wreaths. The wreaths are from Michael's and with a 40% off coupon - really makes the whole deal easy to do on the cheap! 

I do have a suggestion. If you are buying the mesh from the dollar tree you really need to grab them as soon as you see them. So like as soon as they set out the Easter stuff or Christmas stuff and you see piles of mesh buy them up - its so much easier to take them back if you don't use them all. I learned this the hard way - I only but 8 rolls of mesh initially and then had to scramble and call around looking for more rolls and well it was a headache and we had to drive to Egypt to pick the other rolls up...I think its because mesh wreaths are such a hot trend right now....

I will be linking this up to the following parties:

Thursdays favorite things 

the dedicated house

the DIY Dreamer 

Happy Crafting ya'll.

xo

tina