St. Patrick's Day Front Door Decor

So last month found me throwing together a last minute Valentines wreath with random supplies I found around the house. That one turned out so well, that I decided to try my hand at a St. Patrick's Day front door piece.

Needed Supplies: cardboard, paper plate, gold foil "grass", craft foam or cardstock shamrock shapes, ribbon (for hanging), and acrylic paints: green (two shades), black, sky blue, and whatever shades you'd like to use for a rainbow. I used purple, medium blue, green, yellow and red. I really like orange too but I was OUT (OUT! as if?!) of orange acrylic paint.

Additional supplies (these are things most people will already have on hand): box blade or some such to cut cardboard, paint brushes, glue gun and glue sticks.

For this project, I measured the backing cardboard to fit the supplies I was using. I started by tracing the paper plate, then laying out the shamrocks around the plate outline to get the dimensions I needed. I marked the edges of the shamrocks on the cardboard with pencil. Once I set them aside, I then "connected the dots" on the circle those marks made. That outer circle is the one you want to cut out with the box blade. 

Cut the paper plate in half.  Use it to trace the top of the "pot" section of the center circle. Paint that section and the outside of the paper plate black. I missed getting a picture of my adorable daughter painting the paper plate for me. She did an excellent job. Next paint your rainbow. I started with the purple and painted one arcing stripe. Paint a blue stripe next to the purple, then green, yellow and red. You get the idea.  :-)  Fill in the rest of the sky with blue. 

Paint the outer circle with green. I used metallic green, which went nicely with the sparkly shamrocks. I like sparkly. 

Hot glue down the plate and shamrocks. I recommend laying out the shamrocks before you attach them so you make sure the spacing is good. Unless you're really nerdy then measure off the circumference, divide by the number of shamrocks you have and space them exactly. I like the eyeball-it method personally (even though we are a really nerdy family).  

Glue your ribbon (or cut up T-shirt in my case) to the back. Make sure your volunteer knows what you are asking when you ask if the ribbon is centered. As you can see, mine is slightly off kilter. I love you, Melanie! But I was asking if the ribbon was centered, not whether the whole thing looked good or not. LOL. Stuff some gold foil shreds into your pot and VOILA! 

Super Simple Valentine's Day "Wreath"

As you know, we moved the first of November into our dream home. I feel blessed every day that we found such a great house and one that we could AFFORD! However, I recommend NEVER moving right at the start of holiday season. As if we had a chance of ever getting fully unpacked in a timely manner (does anyone ever actually get fully unpacked?), moving right before the holidays means a lot of boxes get stashed in corners or the basement and forgotten. And while my Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and other major holiday decor all was packed in neatly labeled boxes, the less common holidays, like Valentines, wound up having decor strewn through a myriad of randomly packed boxes from our old basement.

In other words... I can't find my Valentine's wreath for the front door. After a quick search for it and a lack of desire to conduct anything more than a quick search, I started nosing around my craft room (still also mostly in boxes) to see what I could come up with relatively quickly and easily.

First a visit to the kids' downstairs play space that is full of cardboard:

Using newspaper to get a sheet big enough, I made a heart template in the good ol' grade school style... half a heart along the fold to make it symmetrical. I didn't measure the size of the heart beforehand, but just went with what looked right to me. It wound up about 15" high. 

I traced the pattern on my cardboard. Once the outer heart was traced, I drew another heart inside it and cut both hearts out with a box cutter. This is the ONLY time I have ever liked the tile floors in my kitchen.  

At this point, I painted the heart red with basic acrylic paint. Forgot to take a picture of that step.  Since the cardboard will show through in the finished wreath, I didn't want to leave it plain. 

Time for cutting... my finished wreath took the 5 adult-size t-shirts, two bright red and three red tie-dyed left over from another project. Any combination of "Valentine's" colors would do. I just used from the arm holes down to the bottom hem.  

Cut off the bottom hem then cut strips across, about 1.5" to 2" wide. Cut these strips at each end so that you have two strips out of each circle of t-shirt fabric. Start tying. Since I had more tie-dyed shirts, my pattern was two tie-dyed strips, then one red strip. I tied the tie-dyed strips first then the red strip between them so the red sat on top a bit. I used a wider strip of red t-shirt material, cut once into one longer piece, to make the holder.  

TADA!

Not too shabby for a thrown together wreath. 

This project can also be found at the Link Party at Make It and Love It: