celebration: DIY “little man” birthday tie wreath

I adore wreaths!  I even have a Pinterest board titled “wreaths, wreaths, and more wreaths!” with 50 54 pins :)  Now, you would think that because I do adore them I might indeed have a new wreath every month.  Well, I don’t wanna burst the bubble buuuuut…my Christmas wreath sat on my door well into March – HA!  Finding the time to actually make a wreath is another story ;)  So let’s start over – I adore THE IDEA OF wreaths! ;)

Special occasions do call for some wreaths though!  I saw this tie wreath, where else but…you can take one big guess…wait for it…hehe – PINTEREST!!!  Here’s the original idea, it’s from Good Housekeeping as an idea to repurpose dad’s old ties into a wreath for an Eco-Friendly Christmas wreath.  Well, I can’t say that this wreath is really per se Christmasy, but it’s perfect for Father’s Day or in my case, a “little man birthday” party!

So, that was the inspiration for this:

I had no desire to repurpose the hubby’s ties (and well, he only owns like 3).  Annnnd, I was of course in a time crunch (nothing like waiting until the night before ;), with no desire to run to Goodwill and buy up a bunch a 70’s printed old ties.  So, I turned to paper!  Annnnd, I of course didn’t have an extra wreath form lying around the house, buuuut I did have about 10 embroidery hoops (CIRCLES!) in the crafting pile of things “to-do” ;)  So with a quick design in Photoshop, an embroidery hoop, some double stick tape, and some random black & white ribbon – I went to work.

I feel like in general, my best ideas & best work come in high stress situations…like waiting until the night before with only the tools I have in the house because it is 10pm and I’m just getting started & everything is closed kinda thing!  So, I created this little tie & turned it into a wreath (I also used it for his happy birthday banner – dual purposes babee!).

I laid out all the pieces first to see how many I would need; I used 18.  When I cut them out, I cut a little tab out on the top of each tie to sandwich in between the outer & inner hoop.  I then put a piece of double stick tape on top of the tie & wrapped it around once.  I did this all the way around – 18 times.  Because it looked a little sparse, I decided to add some flare to it by knotting black & white ribbon between each tie (I used different lengths each time, anywhere from 3” to 5” (I kept it varied so it looked less symmetrical, and more sporadic).  When I got to the end I really wanted to cover up the gold tightener at the top of the embroidery hoop.  I didn’t want to put a huge ribbon on it or it would be turning into something more “girly” & less “little man”.  Soooo, I quickly designed a little announcement label saying “Mister Man is turning ONE” :)

So here’s what you will need to make this “little man” wreath:

1. cardstock or heavyweight paper to print on.
2. the printables below (there are 4 ties to a sheet, so depending on the size of your embroidery hoop, print out the amount you need accordingly).
3. scissors.
4. a 7”/17.8cm sized embroidery hoop (the great thing about the embroidery hoop is that it allows you to loosen & tighten as you go around).
5. double stick tape.
6. 1/4” black & white ribbon.
7. some patience! ;)

And here are the printables (click on each button for a printable PDF file):

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