D.I.Y WREATH

Wreaths can be super expensive, often worth it but why pay so much when you could create one yourself for a fraction of the price and have it bespoke to your own colour and flower preferences! 

So in this blog I’m going to talk you through making your own wreath with all things easily accessible from local stores. This tutorial is based on a wreath from Christmas but the process is the same, just switch up the things you include! It’s super easy to make it’s the design that can be the harder part.
Below is the wreath I'm going to talk through

So to start I got the wreath base, a beautiful intertwined twig wreath which I love compare to the plastic or polystyrene ones in this situation because they’re easier to attach things too and if you want to leave some on show as I did then it looks great! 

Rattan Wreath Base- Hobby Craft, £3.50 Click here for product.

Hobby wire- Hobby Craft £1.00- Click here for product.

For attaching everything to the base you'll want hobby wire & maybe have some super glue if you’re wanting to add things that can’t be wired on such as single berries etc. 

So now the fun part, choose your flowers! Country Baskets, Dunelm and Home sense all have a lovely selection of faux flower stems in a wide variety of types. For my wreath I chose the Ava Cream hydrangea stems from country baskets (click here for product) white roses, eucalyptus and spray blossoms all from Dunelm.

Ava Cream Hydrangea from Country Baskets - Click for product. 

Now you have all your pieces you can get creative! 

• So firstly cut all the stems shorter, you still want about 10cm to play with to allow for attaching but the rest can be chopped off. 

• I started with my eucalyptus which is my base flower and the one I want to sit at the back that will create the shape for my arrangement. Lay them one by one in the direction you want them to sit and feed the hobby wire around the stem and into and around the nearby twigs in the base. Twist the ends around to secure and continue onto the next.

• Continue the same process for anything you want to be attached in the same way, as you can see I did the same for my sparkly ferns. 

• So now the beautiful flowers. I used the hydrangeas first as they’re the largest flower and the other flowers can be placed around without getting lost. However instead of laying these across I just pushed the flowers stem through and then bent the stem around and fastened wherever suitable with the wire again. 

• I continued this same process with all the flowers, it’s best just to fiddle around, find where it sits well and then find the closest twig to fasten too with the wire. The white roses I’ve used came in a bunch and are thin wired stems anyway so could just be fastened with their own stem.

• I finished with adding some leaves to the back that were from the stems that were cut at the start. 

• It takes some patients and some fiddling and changing as you go but consider where you’re planning on hanging it, for example I wanted mine on the front door so I made sure I secured as well as possible to allow for the wind. Otherwise if it’s inside you can be a bit more lenient and most will hold itself.

• Lastly my wreath hanger was from hobbycraft and with the base being twigs it means I could just slip it onto the hanger without needing for anything else. String, ribbon and most other hanging methods can all be used easily by feeding through the top of the twig base! 

So there we go! it’s nots a long tutorial at all, slightly longer to create, but super easy and effective and the same method can be used for any style weather that’s filling the full base with stems or just as section as I did. 

Lots of Love
Emily-Louise
xxx

Me and my Soft Furnishings.

Oh Hey! so you've clicked on my new blog and first ever post, Thank you. I'm very excited to be doing this and finally having a blog up and running! yay!

I have been encouraged by my other half to do this for a while and now I have decided to go for it after brief chat with one of my favourite bloggers. My blog will mainly consist of, interior design or interior related DIY but maybe a few lifestyle & fashion related content thrown in!

First of all I thought I would tell you a little bit  about me and how I fell into making bespoke cushions and creating Emily-Louise Soft Furnishings, which has taken off more than I could ever of dreamed off.

So me in short... (although I'm not short at 5ft 11) I'm a full time Paramedic for the NHS, and play netball 3 times a week which takes me all over the country :). I've been with Mat for 4 and a bit years now, I have 1 older sister and 4 very close girlfriends. In June 2017, after a very stressful few months, age 23 me and my partner (who wishes he was 23) purchased our first ever home, not our forever house but yet still a beautiful home that I'm so grateful for.

I'll be honest; 6 months prior to moving in, I had pretty much designed our hole house on a mood board app and we had bought the majority of the furniture and stored it all in my room at my parents house or in there front room (which I'm sure they loved). It was a risk but having an impatient nature it just had to be done!

Me and the OH always talked about focusing on the living room first as that is where we new we would spend majority of our time having spent 18 months in a room at my parents to save for the home (a lot of you will know the struggle) and like most I wanted it to be cosy comfy and classy.

The statement piece in our front room we feel is our sofas with the feature mirrors behind which was my other half's idea (he made me write that bit, but i'll give it to him....I thought of a large mirror behind, he came up with the three)

So how did bespoke cushion making come about? Well we loved the sofa style and colour but unfortunately not the cushions it came with and after browsing all the usual stores, I found cushions I liked but either they didn't suit or I just was not feeling them!

So being the creative, impatient person I am I then thought of attempting to make my own and having always liked being creative whether thats drawing , painting or designing I figured why not!

I made my first lot of cushions by hand (can't imagine doing that again, praise the sewing machine!) and here they are in the images below. Friends and family would often pop by and say how they loved them not knowing I made them, which was really lovely and first gave me a bit of a business idea.

Therefore I decided after making my living room set that I wanted to make them for all the rooms, and probably not even the next day they were all done! (impatient strikes again). Below is a picture of the master in which I have made all the cushions also. 

Naturally this then led to posting them on my Instagram which I already had to document the new build process and my interior progress. The love and requests I received was overwhelming and really pushed me to start Emily-Louise Soft Furnishings.

So really It was never my intention to start up a bespoke business, one thing led to another and now there isn't many days that go by (other than my crazy long shift days) where I'm not at my machine and I am so super grateful for all the orders and without Instagram this wouldn't be possible.

lots of love to you all for taking the time to read, & I'm looking forward to creating more content!

Emily-Louise 

xxx