I am little bit in love with those decorative jewel stones you can get at the Dollar Tree. Right now, DT stocks them in lovely shades of blues and greens that scream "SUMMER!" to me. I used some of the rectangular ones as vase filler in my living room because I think they sorta look like sea glass.
I had a brilliant idea to buy a whole mess of these stones in order to make a lovely, glittering summer wreath for our front door. The ribboned lovebird wreath was starting to get a little sad-looking, so it was time for a change. I picked up a styrofoam wreath and several POUNDS of the stones when I last stopped in at the Dollar Tree.
When I got home, I eagerly ripped open the packages of stones and heated up my glue gun. One by one, I glued large and small blue, teal, and green glass stones to the wreath.
I was having a little bit of trouble placing the stones so that you couldn't see the white styrofoam through the cracks, but I dutifully kept gluing more and more stones to the wreath. The colors were really pretty, and I couldn't wait to see what the wreath would look like once the sun hit it on our front door!
As I rotated the wreath to add more stones, already-glued stones kept popping off at me. No problem. Just add more glue. And more stones. And more glue. And so on.
When I had been at it for a while, I decided to pick it up and look at the big picture. That's when I realized that the escaping stones weren't my only problem. The wreath was HEAVY. Like 4 or 5 pounds heavy. Like if I slammed the door too hard and the wreath fell on my foot, I would be making a trip to the ER heavy.
Turns out several pounds of glass stones don't magically get lighter when you hot glue them to a wreath form.
So, I yanked off all those pretty blue, green and teal stones and brainstormed a new design for my wreath.
I ran down to the basement and grabbed a few skeins of yarn and some fleece from my stash. And I literally mean ran. There's mice down there. And I don't want to meet any of them.
I spent a few hours on the couch wrapping blue and cream yarn around the styrofoam wreath.
I cut out some hydrangea-like flower shapes from some scraps of fleece and felt and stitched them onto the wreath.
Ta Da! Wreath Fail Fixed.
I like the quasi-nautical look of the alternating blue and white stripes and the little touch of feminine flowers. Not bad for a silver medal wreath attempt.
Now I just have to figure out what to do with those pounds of glass stones I have lying around.
