So, we posted two weeks ago about our latest activity, the Crafty Challenge. This challenge was to use old thread spools in a craft; any sort or craft. There were no limits and you had two weeks to complete the project. Today we unveiled our projects and here is mine!

I decided to make a wreath. This is usually Cheri’s forte, but I thought I could do something that was good, clearly not up to her standards (I will have to get some pics of the wreaths she has made for me posted sometime), but pretty.
I have to admit that I procrastinated the whole two weeks away and actually made this in about 2 1/2 hours this afternoon. First, I had to paint the spools. I used some acrylic paint I had leftover from an art class. None of the colors are repeated and in fact one of the spools is not painted at all, it is a lovely green color. You can see it below with the labels still in view.
I used some heavy gauge wire and some plastic tubing to make the wreath base. I pulled the wire through the tubing and then wired the ends together. I then made the loop hanger. I covered the tubing with some pretty blue ribbon to hide the base and blend it into the background a little.
Then, I wired the spools to the base. We actually only received 22 spools for this challenge and I did not have enough to go around the entire base, so I designed a large bow-type decoration at the bottom of the wreath to hide this fact.
I wrapped the thin teal and brown ribbon all around the spools and then layered it very heavily in the bottom space to give some fullness to the striped bow.
The striped ribbon is cut into several pieces and each curled and then wrapped around the wreath base with some more wire. This gave me a long bow instead of a really large bow.
I am really happy with how the whole project turned out. I was so surprised by the variety of each of our finished crafts, so keep on reading! I can’t wait for the next Crafty Challenge (to be announced tomorrow)!