Burlap Monogram Decorative Letter

Lately I've seen several cool posts about things people have made with burlap. Honestly I have never really been a big fan of burlap...I mean I like the texture but it smells kinda weird and frays and can be a little messy. With three kiddos, I probably have enough mess in my life. After trip to Hobby Lobby I decided to come home with a yard of burlap to fool around with. I had a plain paperboard hollow letter "C" hanging around and decided to get crafting. You will notice in my pictures I also started working on a letter "G" for a friend of mine as a surprise because she liked my "C" so much.

For each letter I used about a half yard of burlap and a dozen glue sticks.

Start by folding your burlap in half once.

Cut through both layers of burlap and make 2-inch strips. It doesn't have to be exact. The wonkiness only adds to the character of the finished product.

Start with about 10-12 strips of the burlap. I think I ended up using 14 strips. How many you use depends on how tightly you pack the squares of burlap together when gluing your project together.

Next cut all the strips of burlap into 2-inch x 2-inch squares. Again they don't need to be perfect.

...and continue cutting squares out of your strips of burlap. Make lots of piles and heat up your glue gun.

Time to get out your letter and remove any stickers or store tags.

Fold your burlap square in half. Put a dab of glue in the middle and fold in half again. The edges do not need to match up exact. In fact, you probably want to make sure some don't match up just to vary how the burlap flowerettes look. Be careful when folding with the hot glue because it can and does seep out and burn your fingers.

Now your flowerette is ready to be glued down onto the paperboard letter. There really is no method to my madness. Put on a dab of glue on the burlap and squish it onto the paperboard. Again be careful not to burn your fingers.

Try to vary which edge of the flowerette you glue to the letter. Be sure to also glue burlap to any edge that you will see. It is not necessary to glue to the back.

Here you can see the back edge of the letter.


Keep gluing! You can do it!

  It took me about an hour and a half to do all the gluing. The pads of my fingers were covered in dried hot glue and burlap pieces. My workspace and floor were covered in shedded fibers from the cutting and gluing. Once you get done it will probably be necessary to give your letter a "haircut" to get rid of the fullness in between the space in the middle of the letter in order to be able to tell which letter it is.

Here it is sitting on a shelf.

...and here resting in the nook of a bookcase with his friend the pineapple.

...and hanging as a simple wreath.

...and hanging as an embellished wreath.

What are you going to do with yours? Take a minute and leave me your idea in my comments below. Thanks for stopping by!

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Fraser Fir Monogram Wreath

Every year I make my own wreath for my front door. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, our family goes out and cuts down their Christmas trees and I scrounge around collecting branches from the bottom layers of the trees. I brought home a garbage bag full of white pine, Fraser fir and scotch pine boughs.

My husband took a few wire dry cleaning hangers and used them to fashion a "C".
Honestly I could have done this myself but it is always fun to put him to work.

Next use garden clippers or pliers to clip sections of your pine tree boughs. Layer the clumps on top of each other until you get a thick enough clump. This is probably about four sections of the boughs. I used a mixture of mostly Fraser fir because I had the most of it and also white pine and Scotch pine.

Use green floral wire and wrap it around the ends of the boughs several times.

Then set the clump at the top edge of the wire letter and wrap the wire several times around the wire. There is no need to clip the wire until you have completed wrapping clumps of pine to the wire letter. Make sure to wrap each new section of pine as close as possible to the section you just wired. This will help to keep the wreath nice and full.

It took me about an hour to finish mine. Since I can rarely resist something shiny and glittery, I picked these up during my weekly visit to my local Target.

At first I used them to do this...

and it bored me to tears. So I broke out some fab new red burlap and re-constructed my wreath.

I like it much better now. In case you are wondering, I used 4 inch pieces of floral wire to attach each bulb to the wreath. First slide the wire through the hook at the end of the bulb. Twist the buld end around the middle of the a few times to hold it on. Then decide where you want the ornament to hang and twist the wire around a section of the wreath.

After I finished this version, I still wasn't totally happy so I went to work on it again. I clustered three bulbs together and hot glued them together. Then I once again used the floral wire to connect the cluster of bulbs to the wreath.

That's it. I've read that you should spritz your wreath with water once a day in order to keep your wreath looking fresh longer. Must. Remember. After viewing my pictures, I also must remember to get a manicure. Working with pine is a little rough on the digits.

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