Butterfly Wreath

Good Morning and thank you so much for stopping by again. I hope you are well and have a good Bank Holiday weekend. Well I have something completely different using stamps from Leonie to share with you today, So I am hoping that you will like it.

I have lots of grape vines here, when they are pruned, there are lots of long lengths to get shot of. A lot of them go into the stove, but I thought it would be nice to find a different use for some of them at least. I decided I would like to try and make a grape vine wreath.

After some research online, I found out that it is in fact fairly easy to do, I took three equal lengths of vine and formed them into a rough circle shape. Then brought the ends through the centre, wrapped and repeated. Before running out of length I added some more until the wreath was about the right size, any loose pieces can be tucked in or trimmed back with pruning sheers. I was really please with the finished result, at the same time cursing, thinking about the money I had spent in the past buying them in the past. I put this aside while I got everything else ready.

There are quite a lot of elements to the wreath, so It's best to go through them one by one.

I cut about 10 x 1 1/2'' strips of calico, approximately 36'' long and when bunched together I concertina folded them and tied them together with garden twine about 2/3 of the way up. I dyed one part with Slate and one part with Lavender, Quick and Easy Dyes from Forest Fibres on ebay. When they were dry I cut them in half and rolled them into roses. I will do a post on this at some point soon, to show how. There were a couple of strips left over that I tied into messy bows.

On a separate piece of calico, I stamped some of Leonie's stitched hearts from the new collection with archival waterproof ink. I stamped inside the hearts with 'Love' & 'Dreams', again with black Archival Ink. I dyed half of them in Slate and half in Lavender at the same time I dyed a square of calico in Slate to become my backing. Once they were dry, I roughly cut out the hearts and backing and stitched around leaving a gap for stuffing. I then stitched up the gap and frayed around the edges.

I took some 2'' strips of hessian, approximately 18'' long and made 3 large roses. I wrapped some garden string around paint brushes 3'' long, secured with pins at either end, covered in PVA and left to dry.

Then I made a few Paper roses, I took half a sheet each of Tim Holtz Core-dinations cardstock, Tattered Rose and Dusty Concorde from Crafters Companion. I cut various size circles, using my circle cutter, then run them through the Textures Leaf Vein embossing folder by Crafters Companion. I then sanded them back to reveal the core colour. I cut these into spirals, wound them to form roses and secured them with Cosmic Shimmer Glue.

Taking an MDF tag, I coloured it using Cornflour Blue Nuvo Embellishment Mousse by Tonic Studio's. I applied 2 coats and polished it once it was dry. Then using Indigo Blu Flitter Glue, I used a sentiment stamp from Leonie's New Stamp Collection and covered it with Gilding flake.

Finally I assembled the wreath, using a hot glue gun. I  started off by placing the MDF tag and building up around 3/4 of the wreath leaving some bare vine.

I have really enjoyed making this project and I sincerely hope you have enjoyed the step by step. I know it was a long one but I really thin it is worth taking the time to make such a nice piece. Thank you so much for your continued visits and wonderful comments, I do read everyone of them and try to answer. Thanks for your support. Take care xx