DIY Wreath and More Fall Decor

Last week I shared with you some of the indoor fall decor I had been working on.  Well, today it's time to take that party outdoors...to our front door specifically.  I had visions for this area for awhile ever since my parents handed down these planters to us when they moved last year.

They were both the concrete-ish color of the first one when I started, but you can probably guess from the picture that I decided to give them a little paint job.  I used three coats (one full can!) of some black indoor/outdoor spray paint to rid the planters of the bland they had going on.  

Once they were all black and shiny, I planted a few mums (I love how mums scream fall, don't you?) in each planter and transported them to our front porch.  Voila...instantly more appeal:)

But I didn't stop there!  I also wanted to add a seasonal wreath to our front door, and found some inspiration from where else, but Pinterest!  While searching, I fell in love with some simple grapevine wreaths adorned with (like that fancy talk?!?) felt flowers.   So, I headed out to AC Moore to pick up my supplies (I've included the prices so you can see how crazy affordable this project was):

• 11 sheets soft felt ($.29 each)
• 1 sheet green felt ($.29)
• 1 grapevine wreath ($2.49)
• glue gun (already owned)
• canisters or other circular object for tracing (already owned)
• scissors

The first step in conquering my wreath was making tons of felt flowers.  To start the felt flowers, I needed circle shapes.  If you're good at drawing free-hand, that would probably work because they certainly don't need to be exact.  But I'm terrible at it and pretty anal, so I used some kitchen canisters (which conveniently come in three sizes for a little much-needed flower variety) to trace circles on to my felt.  I was able to fit three circles, one of each size canister, on each sheet of felt.  Ooohhh...one more tip here, make sure to trace very lightly.  I made the mistake of using a Sharpie marker the first time and it was too dark by the time I went to make my flower (it showed up on the edges), so then I switched to a pen.

Once the circle is drawn, cut it out completely along the line.  With a circle to work with, cut into the circle in  a spiral using wavy cuts.  Does that make sense?  Maybe a picture will help...

Keep going until you get all the way to the end and have nothing but a little oval-shaped nub left.

Starting at the end that you started cutting, roll the felt up.  You can roll tightly (for smaller, tighter flowers) or loosely (for bigger, fuller flowers)...I mixed mine up for further variety if you're wondering.  

When you get to the end, take a dot of hot glue to secure the nub to the back of the flower, thus forming its base.  And then you'll have a cute little flower!

Like I said earlier, I was attempting to cover a grapevine wreath with these guys, so I repeated the above process about 30 times (which really was quite enjoyable and not nearly as maddening as it may seem).  I wanted to have all my flowers ready, so I could play around with layout before I started gluing them down.  Once I was satisfied, I just used another dot of glue on each flower and pressed into its final resting place on the wreath.  With all 33ish flowers in place, I went through and cut out some small leaves (those I did freehand) and added them in a few places to add some interest.  And here's the final product of my wreath:

And now for the grand reveal of the entire front door area...planters, mums, and wreath:

What do you all think?  I am really happy with it, especially if all this rain would clear out and maybe we could actually see it in some sunshine!  Most excitingly, though, the entire cost of the front door makeover was about $25, most of that going towards the cost of the flowers.  Yay!  I love me a wallet-friendly makeover.