Ditch Traditional Front Door Wreaths: The Rustic Way To Make A Statement

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Ahhh, autumn: It's a time when your body and soul just want to sink into the coziness of home and all of the trappings of the season. Throughout your house, you might have favorite dried flowers pressed between the pages of heavy books, pumpkins sitting by the front door, or a stack of wood next to the fireplace. Items like these are such a part of fall that DIYers love to incorporate them into rustic front door wreaths. However, this particular DIY project comes with a twist. Its shape is pumpkin-inspired,  and fall logs and dried flowers have a starring role in the wreath's design. 

The wooden pieces of this DIY make up a majority of its construction. You'll build the wreath form out of craft sticks or wood shims, like these Nelson Wood Shims, and evoke chopped fireplace wood with craft rounds, such as these Ticiosh Wood Slices. The rounds have bark on the outside of them, making them look like tiny pieces of chopped firewood. The pressed flowers can come from the craft store, too, although if your crafting does involve drying flowers, you can use those instead. Other decorative items and fall ephemera, like raffia ribbon, burlap ribbon, acorns, mini pumpkins, and even cinnamon sticks for some authentic fall scent, can also find a place on this wooden wreath. Additionally, you'll need two adhesives — a craft glue like Mod Podge and a glue gun — to secure the items to the wreath. You'll also need a paintbrush and an industrial staple gun.

The point of using craft sticks or wood shims for this, as opposed to a pre-made wreath form, is to shape the wreath so that it resembles the outline of a stylized pumpkin. To do this, you'll use first the glue gun and then the industrial stapler to attach eight shims together in an octagonal shape. But if the prospect of this feels more challenging than you'd like or you just want a more traditionally-shaped wreath, you can substitute the shims for a wreath frame like this one from Longan. 

Next, arrange the craft rounds on top of the pumpkin-shaped frame you've made to work out their spacing before gluing them down. If you have gaps between a couple of the rounds, not to worry. You'll fill those spots in later. Hot glue the "sliced logs" in place. Then, turn the wreath over and add staples to the shims, ensuring that they go through the wood and into the craft rounds. Place dots of craft glue on the front of the craft rounds. Lay flattened dried flowers down on them, and add more Modge Podge on top to seal it. Since this is a fall display, consider using flowers that fall into the season's rustic color palette, like marigolds, sunflowers, and zinnias. Using a color wheel will help you find complementary colors to the reds, oranges, and yellows of the flowers if you want your wreath to have more visual variety.

Once the glue on the flowers is dry, tie ribbons in the spaces between the craft rounds. Then decorate the piece by gluing accessories like miniature pumpkins, pine cones, berries, acorns, and other seasonal pretties. Finally, staple a loop of ribbon to the top to form the pumpkin's stem (its hanger), and hang the piece up on your door.

Your DIY fall wreath serves as more than just holiday door decor. It can be a way to extend greetings to the friends and family that stop by this season. There are several ways you might do this. First, you could leave seven craft rounds at the top of the piece and paint the letters with the word "welcome" on the rounds, adding one letter to each wooden piece so that the word is spelled out across the top curve of the wreath. A stencil would help you craft neat letters.

Or, you could get a slightly larger wooden craft round — these 5arth Natural Wood Slices would work — and paint your family name or the house number on it. Then, using a twine cord, attach it to the top of the wreath so that it hangs down inside the hole in the middle of the wreath. Adding bells, like these decorative holiday bells, to the rustic door wreath offers a pretty alternative to the name plate. And, it's hard to beat how cheery they sound every time you open the door.