Halloween ribbon wreath

When I was little, one of my friends used to have a halloween party every year. The house would be decorated with fake cobwebs and glowing pumpkins. Spooky music would be playing and there would be apple bobbing and ghost stories. I loved it.

As I got older, I attempted to trick or treat with some friends but aside from half the people where I live not opening the door to us, the rest gave us tangerines and other fruit. FRUIT!? Come on... everyone knows you want sweets! Here in the UK, we just don't "do" halloween very well unlike the US who seem to embrace it and go all out! Despite the supermarkets being full of bags of sweets and decorations, you very rarely get someone knocking on your door and the most people will do is carve ONE pumpkin. Boring.

This year I have decided I am going to celebrate halloween regardless. I'll buy sweets, watch Hocus Pocus and make butter beer! I am also going to decorate inside and outside the front door with carved and painted pumpkins.

One thing I decided to make was a halloween wreath for the front door. This is how mine turned out...

{click photos to enlarge}

I have never made a ribbon wreath before and I'm annoyed that at the time I didn't think to blog the process. It's quite straight forward, you just cover a polystyrene wreath (I got my large one from Hobbycraft for around £3) in looped ribbons, either securing with pins or glued down with a glue gun. I went for the glue because using a glue gun makes me happy.

The amount of ribbon you need will depend on the size of your wreath. First you need to wrap ribbon around the weath to cover the polystyrene and then I used about 12 different colours for the loops. You can use as many or as few colours as you wish and I also added in some little pom poms. Originally I purchased about 15 meters of ribbon in total but had to go back for more. If you think you have enough, you probably don't! You need to cut your ribbon into 4.5inch strips to make the loops and then you just keep gluing until the whole thing is covered. I also added a wooden 'BOO' that I painted white and sponged on some black around the edges. This was also from Hobbycraft for £1.99.

Finally I made a bow with some more orange and black ribbon and it was complete! In total it took me around 4 hours and I am contemplating sticking some plastic spiders on there too! You can never go too tacky in my opinion!

There are lots of tutorials online for halloween wreaths and I think I am also going to try THIS one out! I love the gothic feel to it and might also stick on some red roses and a couple of skulls!

I really need to find somewhere to bulk buy ribbon as I have a feeling I will be making more wreaths over the next few months! Let me know if you try this yourself, I would love to see what you come up with!

PS. Here is a youtube tutorial I found that will help!