{ Tutorial: Burlap Bubble Wreaths }

First off, I must make what I fear is going to be one of many apologies for the delay between entries. It has been an absolutely insane couple of weeks!

For those who don’t know me personally & who just happen across this blog, I currently work a FT job in marketing, have a wholesale business featuring dog apparel & accessories, and I have recently launched my Krafty Kade brand with retail space in a local boutique. Life can get a little hectic at times, so it seems that I’m always dropping the ball on something. (In this case, the blog.) Last week, I was out-of-town for team meetings for my FT job, which really threw off my production schedule for the launch of Krafty Kade’s retail space (which happened two days ago). Anything in-between is a blur. But, I’ve gotten in lots of crafting in order to have products in the retail space, so now I’m trying to get blog entries written that cover some of those really fun (and VERY doable!) projects. First up: the burlap bubble wreath. Something that looks like this…

Stay with me here. If you only knew just how easy this really is, you would not feel remotely intimidated. So, come with me through a detailed pictorial tutorial that will leave you with a fantastic wreath that looks so much more impressive than it ought to. And, the best part is that it requires zero unique tools. Just some readily available supplies. So, we’ll start with those…

Supplies

You’re going to need:

1) 6” wide burlap ribbon: about 10 yards if you’re doing a 12” wreath; 20 yards if you’re doing an 18-20” wreath. I think mine is a 20” wreath, based upon my rough measurements. What you see in the picture of the finished wreath at the top of this post is 15 yards of plain burlap, with five yards of chevron-printed burlap. The supplies picture above only includes two rolls of five yards. More on that little mistake later, but it ultimately led to the chevron-printed burlap coming into play.

Burlap ribbon is easily found at Michael’s, Hobby Lobby, etc. If you buy it at Hobby Lobby and aren’t in a rush to get this project done, wait until they put ribbon and notions on sale (usually about every-other-week) so you can get it all for 50% off. Or, pick up a roll at Michael’s & use the 40% off coupon, go back the next day & do the same, etc., until you’ve got as much as you need without paying full price. You can do this for cheap.

2) a wreath frame: select one in the size of your choosing; just remember to buy enough burlap ribbon to accommodate whatever size you decide upon. A 20” wreath is about as large as I’d go for a front door, if that gives you some perspective. Wreath frames are found in the Floral departments, typically, and are a couple of dollars. They’re green metal frames comprised of four circles (giving you three open rows) attached together using equally spaced crossbars.

3) any embellishments (bows, ornaments, flowers, pinecone clusters, etc.) you may want to include. I went with one large burlap flower that had sparkly stuff (technical term, of course) in the middle of it. It was on a pick and I ultimately just used the pick to attach it to the frame—no glue required!

Step 1:

Tie the burlap ribbon onto the wreath frame. Do it such that the tail of the knot points towards what will be the back of the wreath. That way, it won’t ever stick out amongst the forward-facing bubbles. In other words, the exact opposite of this:

I tied this, photographed it, and then realized I tied it on reverse from what I’d ultimately want. But, I forgot to re-photograph it the other way. (You’ll notice the curve of the wreath frame. You want the concaved side to be the back.)

Step 2:

Create your first bubble. What you’re doing is gathering small bunches of the burlap and pulling it through the wreath frame in alternate rows. You don’t have to do any tying or knotting for each bubble. As long as you alternate which row of the wreath frame you’re feeding each bubble through, they will stay just fine. I think the most logical and easiest method is to go in order from top to bottom row when putting in the bubbles. That way, it makes sure there’s even coverage. This is what I mean about gathering the burlap into a bubble (also note that in this picture the knot tail is going the correct direction)--

As you can see, it’s not hard. Just grab a bunch of the burlap. Some people choose to twist the base of the bubble gathering before feeding it through the wreath frame. I tried it both ways and didn’t see a difference. I don’t think one holds any tighter than the other, so do it whichever way you prefer.

Step 3:

Feed the gathered bubble through the frame.

Here, I fed it through the wreath frame’s middle row. It doesn’t really matter which row you start in—just remember that you’re alternating each bubble to be fed through different rows each time.

Important note: This is the point at which you need to decide how poufy you want your wreath to be. The bigger you make this first bubble (i.e., how much burlap you pull through), the puffier your overall wreath will be. Each bubble needs to be about the same height to maintain a uniform look, so decide now upon what that height will be. (I think this is about 3-4” high.) Also, keep in mind that the puffier the bubbles, the more burlap ribbon you’ll need.

Step 4:

Feed the next bubble through the wreath frame, using a different row. Here, I fed the second bubble through the outer row:

Another important note: To keep the back of the wreath mostly flat and to keep the bubbles in place best, make sure you are pulling each bubble tight after pulling it through. This will require you to hold onto the previously placed bubble (so that you don’t undo it) while you pull through the new bubble. The end of the ribbon that’s connected to the previous bubble is what you’ll pull tight so that the ribbon is right up against the underneath side of the wreath frame. Like this:

This will take a little bit of practice, but it’s not hard.

As you go along, it will ultimately look like this underneath:

Step 5:

Continue feeding bubbles through the wreath frame in the alternating rows. Be sure to keep pushing the bubbles together as you go along so that they’re in compactly. You will also want to fluff the bubbles a little as you go along so that you can make sure you’re sufficiently covering the wreath frame. You don’t want any of it showing from the front.  It should very quickly start to resemble something like this:

When you get to the end of a roll of the burlap ribbon, knot it onto the wreath frame, like this:

Again, make sure the tail of the knot is pointed towards the back of the wreath frame, like this:

Then, tie the new roll onto the wreath frame & continue just as you have been, ensuring that the bubbles cover up the knots you’ve just tied.

This is what mine looked like after two five-yard rolls:

And that’s when I started to panic. It was apparent that each roll did about one-fourth of the overall wreath, obviously meaning that I would need four rolls. The problem was that I bought three rolls of a darker burlap and five rolls of a lighter color of burlap. I was using the darker burlap to this point and knew it would look insane if I did one-fourth of it in a lighter burlap. I also knew that I was not about to do another two-hour round trip drive back to Hobby Lobby just to get one roll of darker burlap. And I didn’t want to undo all the work I’d just done. So, I kept pondering my options as I worked towards this point:

And then I knew it was decision time. As I slightly perspired over the stress of it all, it dawned on me that I had also bought a couple of rolls of chevron-print burlap ribbon, which I’d intended to use for another purpose. But, sacrifices must be made. And that’s how it ended up like this:

In the end, I decided I really liked having that chevron accent section. I also got positive feedback about it when I took it to the Krafty Kade retail space today. Several people commented on how much they liked the combination of the two, so it turned out to be a good mistake in the end.

Step 6:

Affix your embellishment(s). I don’t have a picture of how I did this, but it’s going to vary anyway depending upon what type of embellishment you go with. You may need to use florist’s wire to attach the object, or maybe hot glue will be best. For me, I just twisted the end of the flower pick through the rows of the wreath frame and it holds it in place perfectly. (Plus, I positioned it such that it covers the knot from the end of the chevron-print burlap and the knot from the beginning of the first roll of burlap.)

In case you’re wondering, the back of the wreath looks like this:

That’s it!  Oh, I guess I did miss one step—hang it wherever your heart desires! I think I’m going to try making some smaller ones next time and may do a trio of them on one wall, each positioned at different heights, hung by wide ribbon. That could look cool. Or, at least it does in my head anyway. Reality could be a whole other story.

I can’t give you a good estimate on how much time this takes to make, but if you’re not stopping every five seconds to take a million pictures in hopes one of them turns out good enough to be used in a blog post, I imagine it’s a pretty speedy process (i.e., 15-30 minutes, depending upon how distracted you get & the size of the wreath). The other great thing about this particular project is that it’s one you can easily walk away from and get back to later, if need be. You don’t need to do it all in one sitting.

At any rate, that is how to make a super-easy burlap bubble wreath. If you make one yourself, please come back and share pictures and any pointers you picked up along the way that I may have overlooked!