Craft Night: Motivate Me May

Since our monthly craft night started several months ago, I have slowly but surely been getting in touch with my inner crafter.

Looking back at past projects, I can see that I am drawn to (over and over...and over again) the same types of crafting mediums: paper, Mod Podge, yarn, fabric (cut into strips only...I don't know how to sew), felt, and hot glue. In short: my crafting game is limited.

I stayed true to my crafting self and came armed to Motivate Me May with fabric, felt, a wreath form, and - wait for it - my hot glue gun. 

Shocking, I know. (Oh, and I brought this yummy Snickers Dip too.)

Theresa found this great butterfly paint chip wreath over at My Sister's Suitcase, and we borrowed some inspiration from there. I have also had my eye on this spring chalkboard wreath at Destination Craft since I first saw it a couple of months ago.

For the felt flowers, we followed this tutorial at Craft Snob and this one at Mrs. Priss (we preferred the latter for the rolling method - rolling the flower starting from the inside first rather than the outside).

Materials used: one large straw craft wreath form, 1/2 yard fabric, three 1/8 yard pieces of different color felt (the kind you buy off the bolt), and loads and loads of glue sticks. 

My total at Hobby Lobby came in just under $9. (I already had the hot glue sticks, and the black hanging ribbon was an afterthought so that's not included in the total).

For nicely illustrated tutorials, click up above on the links I mentioned. For the quick and dirty run-down, here's what I did: 

I started by cutting my 1/2 yard of fabric into 1 1/2-2 inch wide strips using a rotary mat and cutter.

Because my wreath was wrapped in plastic, I decided against using hot glue to hold the fabric on. I started wrapping strip by strip, holding it in place with my other hand as I went. Each time around, I overlapped roughly half of the strip before it. When I started a new strip, I made sure I started in the back so any loose ends wouldn't show on the front.

At the very end, I secured the last strip with a pin in the back. I did go back at the point and hot glue any fabric corners I had sticking out, making sure I was gluing fabric to fabric and not to plastic.

For the flowers, I cut various lengths of long, 4-5 inch wide strips of felt. The longer your piece of felt, the bigger your flower will turn out. The aqua flowers are from an entire length of felt off the bolt (I'm assuming 36 inches). The yellow ones were roughly half the length, and the grey ones were a third.

I folded the entire strip of felt in half and started hot gluing the edges together (NOT the crease). After that, I took a good pair of sewing scissors and cut little notches all the way down the length of the felt, stopping short of cutting all the way through to where I had hot glued.

Then I began rolling my strip up, starting with the center of my flower and working out. I held the base with one hand, and rolled/wrapped with the other. I hot glued at the base of the flower every now and then to hold it in place. At the very end, I cut a circle out of felt and glued it to the back of the flower to finish it off.

I used long pins to stick my flowers into my wreath which allowed me to move them around a bit until I had arranged them just right.

I originally pictured myself hanging this wreath on our front door (we have a dark green door and I wanted something springy that would pop), but when I got home I realized it looked cute next to this chalkboard we have hanging near our side door. 

Motivate Me May did it's job...I started the night with little to no crafting motivation and I ended up with a project that I enjoyed creating and love displaying.

Fabric. Felt. Flowers. Food. Friends. My kind of night.

{P.S. If you're local, the chalkboard was created by this talented lady.}

Linking Up: