Two It Yourself: DIY Christmas Wreath with 'Merry Christmas' Burlap Bow

If you're a wreath in my house you better look out. I've been on a mission to make over every wreath this year...my fall wreath got an update and this week I tackled my Christmas wreath. My Christmas wreath had great bones, it was just tired and worn and weathered. The ornaments were falling off, the bow was smushed, the berries were sagging. It needed a makeover about as bad as I need a manicure...but I digress.

If you've been following Two It Yourself for any length of time you know that I like to shop my house as much as possible. That's exactly what I did for my wreath update and I didn't spend a penny on it. I gathered some of my cleaned and dried pine cones, I recycled a few of the ornaments and gold berries that were on the wreath originally, and I made a 30 second no sew burlap bow from scrap burlap.

I plopped myself and my wreath in front of my fire place and got to work disassembling the wreath.

Once everything was removed there were huge gobs of hot glue that were left behind.

I tried peeling the dried glue off, but a lot of the needles were coming with it so I just twisted the branches that had hot glue on them over and around or under. Look at the difference!

Now I was ready to started placing stuff on the wreath. I just kept moving it around until it really came together.

I had an extra piece of burlap from when I was making the burlap garland for my DIY Lighted Christmas Trees so I used that for the tails of the bow. It just felt like it needed something extra - something special. It needed to wish our visitors a Merry Christmas.

I have printed on burlap tons of times before - we all know I am the queen of printed burlap. But when you print on burlap with an inkjet printer you are limited to the size of a standard piece of printer paper, which meant my bow tails as they were would not work. Since I am anti-paint stencil, if I can be picky, I decided I would print on another piece of burlap and then use spray adhesive to attach it directly on top of the burlap bow tail.

I came up with my design in Powerpoint (Goudy Old Style Size 150). Christmas spilled onto two pages which was not ideal, but it worked out fine.

Then I printed my Merry Christmas onto the 8x11 burlap piece.... (For the full tutorial on how to print on burlap go here and scroll about half way down the page. Do not attempt to run straight burlap through your printer, it will not work!)

Next, I laid my Merry Christmas pieces on top of the bow tail and then used this trick for cutting the burlap straight and without fraying. I used the spray adhesive to attach it all together and wa-la 15 minutes later I was ready to go.

Now it was time to get out the hot glue gun and put it all together. I'm always a little nervous to pick up a wreath - especially one this heavy - for the first time. It's like 'what is going to fall off?'