Jaye’s First Birthday: Burlap Banner Wreath

When I last talked about Jaye’s first birthday party, I’d created a Mississippi River party mood board, and designed and mailed some awesome river steamboat invitations.

Now, as I write this, the party is over! It happened last weekend, and it was a raging success. Full details and pictures forthcoming, but first you have to endure the rest of my crafting and preparations for the party.

The first thing the guests saw as they arrived was the easy burlap banner wreath I made for the front door. So I’ll start with that.

I bought two yards of burlap from Jo-Anns at $2.99 a yard. This was enough for my wreath and another project I’ll tell you about later. I also bought a wire wreath form because it was cheaper than a styrofoam form. Because the wire was thinner, I ended up using way more burlap to make it look thick and fluffy, so I might have made the wrong choice there costwise.

I thought I was going to use this tutorial that I’d found on Pinterest. I started following that tutorial, but quickly discovered that the title, “Easiest Burlap Wreath” was a huge misnomer. I couldn’t get the burlap threaded through the wire frame in a way where it would stay or look substantial at all. And each attempt was fraying my burlap more and more and more. So I abandoned that tutorial and just wrapped my wreath in burlap, overlapping each layer. The wire was covered, but the wreath looked so thin and narrow. I wanted it to look fluffier and more substantial.

So I went back to the drawing board, i.e. Pinterest. After searching for “burlap wreath,” I found a super helpful burlap wreath tutorial that recommended twisting the burlap as you wrapped it around the wreath form. I did that, securing it every now and then with a drop of hot glue. Lots of burned fingertips, but I persevered and it looked good at the end.

I’d originally planned on a plain wreath with just the feather from the first picture, but I changed my mind later. The feather seemed to simple and not party enough. So I decided to make a banner. I started by cutting triangles out of two pieces of gingham scrapbook paper. I just eyeballed the size on the first one and then used it to make more. Then I cut circles out of cardstock to layer on top of the triangles. I found that the inside of a roll of washi tape was the perfect size, so I traced it to make lots of circles.

I glued the circles onto my gingham triangles, alternating the letters between blue and green triangles. I just wrote the letters on with a Sharpie, but a stamp or sticker would have looked cool too if I’d had one. Note my little helper above. I love that baby.

I used a piece of plain blue washi tape to attach the flag to a string. Stick half the tape on the top of the flag and tape the rest around the string.

There were little bits of tape showing from the front so I just cut those off.

Then I hung the wreath on the front door! Ta da! A fun and easy burlap banner wreath that can be customized with any message or color scheme!

Check out the rest of the Mississippi River Party here.