Warm weather calls for new decorations

With the mercury soaring into the 80s last week, we decided it was finally time to take down our winter wreath. We usually aren’t quite this late, but somehow we managed to completely miss spring, at least as far as our door wreath is concerned.

It wasn’t all laziness and apathy; we really liked our 2006 holiday wreath. It was a lovely ensemble of fragrant evergreen boughs, pine cones and berries, and we got a pleasant whiff of pine every time we opened the door – even when the wreath had gone from evergreen to now-brown.

But with the wreath removed, there was that pesky blank space on the front door. What better time to come up with a new door decoration for summer, especially when we’ve had the materials on hand for a couple of years.

When we were one and twenty, we used to smile politely at the middle-aged lady down the street whose front porch and garden were awash in wild colors, none of which matched very well. While we admired her free-spiritedness, we silently wondered if her eyesight was all it should be.

Now that we are the middle-aged lady down the street, we can report that our eyesight is OK – it’s just that we feel inexplicably drawn to wild colors that don’t match very well.

That said, our three-heart wreath may not appeal to everyone as far as the color scheme goes, but try to picture it in colors of your own choosing.

As mentioned earlier, we’ve had the three hearts for a while now, but we’ve used the flowers we had originally purchased in a variety of other projects. When we went to buy new ones, the bright yellow, pale pink and white combo struck our fancy.

When putting a wreath together, begin by placing the flowers in position before gluing or wiring. Put the leaves and background flowers on first (such as the white flowers in our sample), working your way up to the flowers you want most prominent on top.

Once you are happy with your design, glue or wire the flowers in place. We chose to wire this time around so that the glue won’t melt or otherwise disintegrate.

If you make a three-heart wreath, you can either put the wreaths together before you decorate or after. We put them together after we had finished with the flower arrangements, joining them at the bottom tip and center top with fine craft wire.

In retrospect, it might have been easier to join them before adding the flowers, but the after joining didn’t really give us any trouble.

By the way, pay no attention to the “Dogs make the best friends” ornament on our door. It’s not part of the wreath; we used it to cover a nail that we leave in as extra support for heavier wreaths.

Our bonus project this week was to decorate two wicker dragonfly baskets (the basket part is the small pocket in the center) we found at a garage sale with stones and flowers leftover from our door wreath.

The dragonflies were completely plain and a bit dusty, but they were in good condition otherwise and the price was right: $1 for the pair.

We used amber-colored stones for one piece, attached with fine craft wire, and added yellow flowers to the basket.

For the second dragonfly, we used dark and pale green stones, also wired on, with the last of the pink and white flowers we had used for our wreath.

We can’t promise that you’ll be able to find dragonflies (although you can find almost anything online if you try), but there are lots of other wicker wall items that will work well with stones and faux flowers.

You might even try adding an air fern or other real flora in a moss bed if you’re opposed to faux.

When adding the stones, cut a longish length of fine craft wire and wrap it around the wicker branches, adding stones as you go. Be sure to check the holes in the stones against the width of the wire to make sure they thread easily.

Place the stones randomly and don’t worry about a pattern unless that’s what you want to do.

Contact Jonetta Coffin at jrocoffin@aol.com.