I have always loved seasonal decorating. However, as my life has changed (read: gotten crazier) and my home has gotten smaller (no room for giant Rubbermaids for each holiday) I've adjusted my style. Now, I am just as likely to gather up things from around the house and only add a very limited amount of actual "holiday" things. I also don't really do traditional colors if I can at all help it (read: red and turquoise for Christmas) and that is especially true for Easter. Pale, muted pastels are the opposite of my preferred palette, and they always remind me of baby showers. Not my thing!
I have realized, though, that drawing in colors I already have around my home gives me many more options for creating cohesive, yet still celebratory, vignettes. So, when I turned my thoughts towards decorating for Easter & spring, I hit upon two things: the adorable tissue paper tassel garland my sweet friend sent me for my birthday, and the color turquoise. Turquoise is present in my home year-round, and I love it. After using it so successfully in my Christmas decor, I do believe it has also earned a spot as part of the two-color theme for spring!
The other dominant color in the banner is purple, and those two clearly look great together. I decided for this wreath I wanted a sort-of ombre, and while it was a little tricky to find three shades of turquoise/aqua that I was happy with, I believe it all came together in the end. The blues are really subtle, but you can just tell that there are three distinct ones in person.
So, on to supplies. I used a 12 inch extruded foam wreath, and what amounted to one piece each of seven different colors: 3 purples, 3 blues, and white. I needed less than 1/4 of a piece of extra purple, but that was due to a cutting mistake, so you should be fine with one of each. Not pictured: hot glue. You could use floral pins, too.
I didn't photograph this part, but I cut a template from cardstock of a "petal" shape. It was 1 and 1/4 inches wide at the bottom and about 2 and 1/2 inches long. I gently rounded the top of the shape. I then cut as many petals out of each piece of felt as I could. It ended up being about 25 pieces per color. I then glued five pieces around the wreath, and then alternated the next row of five to cover the spaces between the first row. I will admit-this wasn't the quickest of tasks in my mind, but I am painfully impatient. I also didn't initially cut out enough pieces, so I had to keep stopping to do that during the gluing process. Learn from my mistake: cut out more pieces than you think you will need!
I was pleased with how it turned out. I combined it (merely for your viewing pleasure because normally my microwave sits on top of that adorable blue dresser that I stole from my mom). You can see the sweet banner from my friend on the front. Love! I put a jar of Peeps bunnies (literally I shoved them in and stuck the lid on), and some Dove coconut eggs (yay for being the right color!)in my olive dish, on top. I "artfully" arranged some purple paper basket filler on top of a white cakestand, threw some white eggs on it (they were plastic "decorating" eggs-12 for about $2 at Walmart) and because I'm
lazy restrained, I left them plain. I actually love how they look on the purple grass. I also framed a simple little print I put together.
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| Right click to save. Then print from saved location. |
I wanted to share it with you, because isn't this verse just the very essence of Easter? Jesus' death gave us peace, and we can take heart, because through His resurrection He overcame the world. Not a future "will" but a present "have". I used Picasa to print it as a 4x6 because that is the size frame I had available!
I played around with the way it looked, but just being honest, in the end it looks like this:
I will spare you a picture of my microwave intervening between the cute dresser and the wreath. But, that's real life, right? The nice part about this wreath is that I won't have any compunction about leaving it up until June, which is great since lately I seem to be accomplishing things at a snail's pace! Yay for decorations that work with my procrastinating tendencies!
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