How to Make a Down on the Farm Wreath With Pretzels

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is Ginny with Simply Beautiful Crafts on behalf of Expert Village and today we are going to make a wreath that I like to call Down on the Farm. I made this charming little wreath for some very special friends of ours who were moving to farmland in Kansas. The first thing that I did was to go to the button section in a craft store and I found all of these delightful buttons that were even entitled down on the farm. I took my prepared pretzel wreath and decided that straw would be perfect for Down on the Farm, but I didn’t have any straw, so I used raffia. I took my raffia, twisted the end of it nice and tight, so that it would be easy to maneuver it through the wreath. When you are winding ribbon or anything else through your wreath, you want to start from behind and come up and then cover a joint as you go. Going down and up all the way through your wreath and of course with something like raffia the look is intended to be less than perfect so you don’t have to worry if some of sticks out or doesn’t go all the way through and you can always trim it off with your scissors if you don’t like the way it looks. Once you have threaded it all the way through; usually you secure it at the back. What I did in this case when I would clip this off, was to let it come out from behind and then I just took another piece of raffia and just tied it up so that it would hang. Once you have done that with your wreath then you are ready to embellish it and what I did with this was to take all of the little buttons and just lay them around until I felt comfortable and I liked the design. I redesigned it about three times before I secured the button pieces. One thing that is difficult not to do is to use every single piece that you have. There were some delightful pieces that just did not fit that I did not put on there or you can just load it up too if you like. Once you have placed them around and you have them where you want them and you have gotten the balance you need, just take your hot glue gun and put a dab of glue either on the back of your button or on your wreath and secure it. The hot glue gun will stick and it will stay very secure. When you have finished with that you also need to make something to hang it with and in this case I used a piece of ribbon that was about the same color as our little rooster and made a hanger. Another thing you can do if you would like is to put something in behind and it will give it a little more depth and you can do that as well. That is how I made this Down on the Farm Wreath for my very special friend."