Snowman Wreath, Dip Baby Dip

Every year there’s a fund raiser wreath auction at our Pre-school, each class makes a wreath to be bid on leading up to the book fair.  My friend Elizabeth and I are room moms together for our daughters’ class and we decided to make a snowman wreath like the ones we’d seen and loved on pinterest

We both have black doors, a snowman is white, we couldn’t find white grapevine wreaths and I was looking for a project to Dip Baby Dip. 🙂  These projects  have been inspiring me and so it was time to test the waters and take a dip!  Ha!  Also, have you ever tried to spray paint wicker?  Difficult, time consuming and 3 months later you’ll find spots that were missed!  I also thought spray paint would get soaked up by a grapevine wreath and end up looking gray.

Martha Stewart said to use water based latex paint.  The knowledgeable gal at Home Depot helped me find a white paint with the least amount of blue drops, Behr: Decorator White, PWN-10.  Martha’s instructions also said to stir so the nice gal sent me home with extra sticks.

Next, I needed a tub deep and wide for dipping wreaths.  David, another knowledgeable person at Home Depot, took me straight to the concrete mixing trays.  Perfect and just $5!

Pour the whole gallon in the tub.  It would have been easier if I had 2 gallons but that would have been pricey.

Have a plastic cup ready to pour paint over the thicker wreaths.

Now, dip baby dip, come on let’s turn baby turn.

And tilt baby tilt, let it drip baby drip.

Don’t let these pictures fool you.  I had white paint in my hair, on my face, covering my hands completely and I am very surprised I didn’t drop my phone into the tub of paint.  There’s also a spill for memories on the floor of the carport.  It was soooo fun and much better than spray paint!  Let it drip dry, back side down on plastic.

Now to assemble the parts to make a snowman.  We found the scarf at Target:

This blog suggested cable ties to attach the wreaths together and I had white ties on hand!

This worked out great weaving them through the grapevines.

The felt Top Hat from Party City easily cut in half with my super Gingher (TITYN!) scissors.  Then I hot glued it to the top wreath.

I wanted to use all the bells so I grouped them together with twine.

And hung them with cord.

I fiddled around with the placement of everything until a centered top hat and scarf looked best.  But something was not quite right with Mr. Snowman.  This is when I went to sleep and hoped a fresh set of eyes would come up with something in the morning.

And they did, the wreath knot was weak and needed stuffing.

So I stuffed it with tissue and added a few dabs of hot glue for security.

And done, it looks great against the black door!

The stuffing at the neck made scarf look nice and full.

And somewhere along the way I was taught that craftsmanship of the back side is just as important as the front side, especially if your door has glass.

Hopefully this Snowman Wreath will go for a bunch in the auction and raise a lot of money for the best Day School on the planet.