So with tomorrow being fathers day, I decided to post a little DIY that I came up with that I made for my Grandpa! My grandpa is in a nursing home, so there we were kinda limited with gifts to get him. He has very few interests, especially after his stroke, but there are a few things that make him happy and one of those is racing. One of the first conversations he had with us after his stroke was about his memories of his cars and racing back in the day. He has come a long way since his stroke, and we just didn’t know what to do for him since he doesn’t live at home anymore, so we decided his room needed a little sprucing up at the nursing home! I suggested a wreath, because that’s festive, and there’s nothing wrong with being festive all year round. I knew that I didn’t want to just buy him any old wreath, because thats impersonal and no fun! So I decided to incorporate something he loves into it (surprise, it’s race car themed). Of course, you can recreate this wreath with any colors, fabrics, and add-ons that you want! Here’s how I did it!
First, you will need a few things to get started!
- wreath ring (however large you like; bigger ring = more tooling)
- tool/burlap/ribbon (preferably with wire in it to hold shape, i usually just guesstimate how much I will need, but I bough about 3 yards of it)
- wire
- scissors
- hot glue gun and hot glue
- mesh tubing (this is extra just for some fun! I only used a small amount of this)
- any add ons that you would like (mine were toy cars)
I am someone who likes to just tackle projects, so I never really measure how much stuff I use. I do know that I used the whole tube of tool that I bought, but I had left-overs of everything else.
My biggest tip if you get stuck is to look up how to make a burlap wreath on Youtube. I have made wreathes before, and I used burlap. You will use the same technique no matter the fabric you purchase. A wreath ring should have 3 smaller rings inside the ring. This is how you get the beautiful “tufts” of the ribbon or tool around your ring. Basically, you go through the smallest ring first, wrapping the first few inches of tool around the ring and then using your wire to adhere it to the ring. You could also use hot glue if you wanted. Next, you weave the ribbon, leaving “tufts” of it in-between each new section of the ring. When you reach the top ring, you will want to twist your tool, and start in the bottom ring again and repeat the weaving (I refer to this as the weave-and-twist). If you notice in the picture of the ring, there are 4 sections in the ring. I usually do 2-3 weave-and-twists in each section of the wreath. Depending on your fabric, you can do more or less, but you want it to be very dense. You don’t want gaps on the wreath, or you’ll be able to see the rings underneath. Weave-and-twist until you have something that looks like this:
You can then adjust your “tufts” and finish the body of the wreath by tying it down with wire or hot glue. I used all of my tool, about 3 yards, for this wreath.
Next comes the fun! Decorating! So I wanted this to ~kinda~ look like a checkered flag. I looked for checkered ribbon at my local Pat Catan’s, but they didn’t have any so I had to do my best to improvise. I decided on the black tool and the silver/black mesh tubing. So, to do the “checkers” I used the mesh tubing and cut off about 8 inches for each “checker”. I folded it over each other into something that looks like this: (and binded it together with wire)
I then placed these somewhat sporadically throughout the wreath where I thought they would look a bit like checkers.
Finally, I added the cars I bought and viola! A race car themed wreath!
I ended up spending only 20$ on all of the supplies listed, so this is an easy, cheap solution to someone who is stumped on what to get someone!
I hope you enjoyed this DIY!
sydneyshops 