V and Co: how to: hydrangea wreath

well i almost feel like saying "welcome back!" but reality is, i've had a great time getting to know a lot of you guys through facebook and or email. this summer has been a summer i hope to not have to repeat again with our THREE moves in THREE months, and our un-employed status. we are very excited to begin our new life here, and even more excited to have an income again. yay us!
it was a nice break, but i'm ready to finally have "normal" again, and well normal for me is "creating" and running around being mom. i love it, and am excited to have the "creating" part be a part of my weekly routine.
so here's what i made for my house this last week:
a hydrangea wreath for my front door.

i've become obsessed with hydrangeas lately. they are EVERYWHERE in my neighborhood. well except on my lot. but i hope to change that next year.

i can't wait to have fresh hydrangeas in my living room and in my dining room table, or adorning a patio table so when friends are there we can enjoy each other the food and the pretty flowers. (okay so i have to actually get a patio table and ahem, friends first to make that happen...but whatever.) aaah yes i think hydrangeas may be a lovely addition to my landscaping...but not right now.
so for now i will be happy with the silk version.
now, the silk version can be costly. BUT micheals was having a 40% off sale of all their fall stem floral, and i bought them out. i still didn't have enough, so i waited to use my 40% coupon on one of the full price flower. and then went crazy and bought the last two at full price.
it's more than i normally pay for things, but when you look at how much they would cost you to buy one already made...it doesn't look so bad after all.
okay lets get started:

what you'll need:
-10 hydrangea stems
-hot glue gun
-wire cutters
-1 14"grape wreath (not pictured)

-first cut off your hydrangea bloom leaving a stem of about 3 inches long.
-do this to all your stems
-because i only had three of the signature stems with a little bit of purple on the ends i wanted to make sure i spaced them out so they wouldn't all clump in one section. (they were also a slight different shade different, not enough for it to bug me, but again if they were all clumped together THAT would bother me.)

so if this is your situation take this step:
-space out your hydrangea with different look and be mindful of where you will need to place them as you push your stems into the wreath.
-to place the hydrangea bloom onto your wreath, gently separate the wreath in the middle and push the stem in and through till your bloom is resting on the wreath.
(don't put hot glue on your wreath yet, we want to make sure you like what you see as a final product first, then we'll glue it down)
-next you are going to place your next bloom slightly crowding your last bloom. (i pushed the blooms of the first one over so it would get a bit more crowded, i wanted to get really bushy!)

-repeat with the next bloom...
-and the next bloom
-till you get all the way around.
-now step back check out your wreath and if you like how it turned out, get out that hot glue gun and place some globs of hot glue around the base of your stems where they go into the wreath.

hang from a mirror, on your mantel, on your front door, or on a garden fence and enjoy your hydrangea.

since making this wreath, i hung it from my door, but i kept thinking it needed to be a little larger, so i went back to micheals, got a 18" grape wreath and added 4 more blooms (total of 14 blooms), and i love how it turned out.

so tell me, how WAS your summer? still in the middle of it? :)
we'll talk soon.
it's good to be "back"