Sprucing Up a Fall Wreath | Fall Wreath DIY

I’m a wreath-maker, for sure. But several years ago (oh, probably 9 or 10??) I bought two fall wreaths that were already perfect – and cheaper than I could make at home myself. The last couple of years, though, my outside fall wreath had started looking a bit pitiful. I wanted it to be fuller.

And I had started adding purple mums/pansies/cabbage to my porch design, so I wanted some purple added to my wreath to tie in the whole color scheme…

And some crazy birds had started thinking that all of these berries were the real thing…

And Walmart has a bunch of cute fall fillers this year for 99 cents each! (not the fuzzy stalks, but the rest) And look at those flower clips! Fun!

And I even though I couldn’t find anything purple there, I remembered I had some leftover purple faux mums from another project.

And I think you can see where this is going. 😉 You could totally do the same thing with a super cheap wreath and dress it up according to your own fall color scheme.

This turned into an outside project because I had already hung the wreath several weeks ago, right before we were having out-of-town guests…and because there was a handy outlet for the glue gun. It was fate. 😉

As the aforementioned glue gun was heating up, I started placing the new fillers in here and there to test the colors. I’ve learned – even if you’re not photographing a blog tutorial, a camera (even your cell phone camera) can help you decide if your design is working or not. It helps you take a step back and evaluate better than looking at your project with a naked eye. I can’t really explain it, but it works for me! =)

I actually filled in the whole wreath without gluing anything yet. Just placing and tweaking and moving and not even cutting stems at that point. You want to make sure your colors are balanced.

I often clipped the flowers onto another stem. Less gluing. Less messy strands of hot glue creating a spiderweb over your lovely project. Although, I guess that could be pretty Halloweenish. 😉

I loved the addition of the colored burlap leaves! This wreath has a ton of different colors, shapes, and textures, which is just my favorite. It keeps your eyes interested, you know?

I started gluing and I got the whole thing almost situated and then realized there was still a huge gap on the top left…

I have perfectionist tendencies, so I had to fix this STAT. One purple mum just wasn’t enough to fill in the top, so I made a little bouquet to fill it in.

Since I do faux flower arrangements here and there, I always have floral wire and floral tape on hand. If you’ve never used floral tape, you’ve gotta stretch it a bit to make it stick to itself. It doesn’t really stick to other things. It was much easier to glue this little “bouquet” in with it all in one piece.

There were several small places left to fill in…

So I pulled out my stash of preserved fall leaves. These are real leaves that have been colored/dried. I bought a big package of them YEARS ago and have used them in crafts and tablescapes ever since.

I used floral tape to bind 2 or 3 leaves together and then glued and tucked them into the wreath.

And I was in love! They were the perfect item to finish off with!

And then after I took the picture of this new-and-improved fall wreath, I realized One More Thing. That one purple mum on the faaaar right side was gonna bother me. 😉 (Because I have problems…) So even though these were already glued, you can gently pull them out and rearrange if needed.