An Apple a Day...

Well, now that it's just about time to get out the Halloween decorations, I thought I would share a post about a wreath I made right around the time school started back up. Right about the time my life became not mine again. Right about the time I started having almost no time to blog. But I digress.

While walking the aisles at Wal Mart the other day, I noticed these beautiful, bright red, FAKE apples in the floral section. You know, the section you never walk down because you don't really need any fake daisies at the moment. I am happy to report there are treasures abounding in that aisle. Everything you see here came from that aisle. I bought a grapevine wreath, the red FAKE apples, four packages of yellow grass-looking stuff, and one package of green grass-looking stuff. I also bought floral wire and those wire pick things for the apples because I don't have them just laying around my house. (I know, what self-respecting crafter doesn't have that stuff just laying around the house?) I took them home and got out the trusty old hot glue gun and worked away. The best thing about this project was that I got to have an hour long conversation with a dear friend on the phone while I was doing it. How's that for multi tasking?

If I had really been thinking straight, I would have taken pictures of the step by step instructions for this kind of wreath. But I was too wrapped up in my conversation to be really thinking straight. So here's what I did, in non-photographed order:

1. Lay a small bunch of the yellow wheat-grass onto the wreath form and wire around with floral wire. The grass I used was very fine, so it would not stay on its own just with the wire. I put a little bit of hot glue on the grass and laid the next section of grass's ends on top of the hot glue and then wired it a little further up on the grass.

2. Continue all the way around the wreath, spreading out the grass a little bit as you go to make it look like a fan.

3. Take smaller sections of green wheat-grass and lay on top of the yellow sections, wiring and gluing all the way around the wreath.

4. Insert wire picks into the bottoms of the FAKE apples. Insert pick into the wreath form through the grass, and then hot glue the bottom of the apple to where you want it to hang on the wreath, just for extra stability. You can also add a little bit of glue to the end of the pick, but you really don't need it. Continue with all the apples all the way around the wreath.

5. Find a cute spool of ribbon in your craft room (I used light green gingham wired ribbon), thread it through the wreath, tie a big old bow at the top and artfully hang the ends of ribbon down. Trim the ends of the ribbon into a chevron, or inverted V. Hang it on your door for the PTA ladies to see when they come to your house.

This was actually a really fun project to do. I had always seen those Martha Stewart segments on her old show where she would make wreaths and do this stuff, and I never thought I had the time to do them. They do take time, but the avenue for creativity is open and you can come up with some amazingly darling things if you just take an hour and play around with some hot glue.