DIY Fall Letter Wreath

I've been slowly decorating our house for Fall and I think it is now complete. I really haven't done too much, but all the little projects have been stretched out over the past few weeks. One of the first things I made was this wreath for our front door. I wanted something that would not be just Halloween, but that could stay up from now until after Thanksgiving. This wreath at a blog called Two Twenty One was my inspiration. I had initially set out to make pretty much the exact same wreath that she had, but as I wandered around Hobby Lobby looking for the right supplies, I ended up with slightly different things in my cart.

In stead of a square styrofoam wreath, I bought a grapevine one. I also didn't really like the color of the sheets of moss that were available, so I bought the clumps of lighter green moss. There didn't seem to be any bags of leaves, but there were branches with leaves still on them. Instead of a paper mache letter, I got a thin fiber board letter. The gold ball fillers were something I already had on hand that I got for 90% off at Hobby Lobby after Christmas last year. Yes, 90% OFF of $1.97 :) The other supplies were things that I already had on hand. Overall what you'll need for this project is:

Plain grapevine wreath
Wooden or paper mache letter
1 bag of clumped moss
1 bunch of autumn colored leaves (fake or preserved)
Any other fillers you may want (like the gold balls)
Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks
Mod Podge
Ribbon for hanging

Unfortunately, I didn't take too many process pictures, but I'll try and be as descriptive as possible in the steps.

I started by picking the leaves off of their stems and roughly hot gluing them to the letter. You could use regular glue or Mod Podge, but then you'd have to wait for it to dry. And if you're like me, that just won't do :) Once the front of the letter was covered, I wrapped the pieces of the leaves that were hanging off the letter around to the back and hot glued them in place there. It's ok if some of the leaf pieces aren't laying completely flat, but if you'd like you can trim the excess off with scissors.

I think these were actually real leaves! They were still on the branches, they'd just been dyed.

With the letter all covered in leaves (don't worry about covering the entire back), I painted over the leaves with a pretty liberal coat of Mod Podge. This step probably isn't necessary, but I thought it might help protect the leaves since the wreath would be outside.

While the Mod Podge was drying, I started arranging the moss and gold filler on the wreath. Once I got them in a place I liked, I used a little more hot glue to secure them. There will be hot glue strings everywhere by this point, so just try and pick them off when you see them.

Once the letter was dry, I placed it on the wreath to line it up, then just hot glued it in place. If you have a letter that has a nice piece across the top, like an S, R, E etc. then you might not have to hot glue the letter in place. You could simply loop the ribbon that you use to hang the wreath around the letter too. If you can manage to skip gluing the letter to the wreath, then you could reuse the wreath for other holidays and make letters covered with something other than autumn leaves!

Now you're ready to loop the ribbon through the wreath and hang it up! I have 2 handy screws on the back side of our screen door that I can use to secure the ribbon, but you could always use a wreath hanger or even a thumb tack or 2 on top of the door.

Enjoy your new fall wreath! 

Are you guys doing any fall decorating? I'd still be up for a few little projects, so let me know if you have any fun DIY ideas! Have a great week!