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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

    You can find me writing for HGTV and DIY Network, follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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Heartsy-Fartsy: A DIY Heart Wreath

February 1, 2012

My mom might proclaim that this is a little more frou-frou than most of my other DIY projects and door decor. As in floofy. As in fluffy. As in that it’s one step away from wearing a doily apron and having curlers in its vines. Maybe this is all an exaggeration, just a little more Kirkland’s than I usually sway. I’m not usually so holiday-centric in my home decor either, especially when it comes to super-sweet, love-focused, country-chic, and lovey-dovey items, but, well, I like the V-Day. And hearts. And I always like natural materials. And because it’s February, I officially consider it V-Day season.

What I’m getting at is, I made a new wreath.

Fancy DIY heart wreath.

The cute painted pinecone wreath that I made pre-holiday-season did just what it was supposed to: held strong and looked pretty from Thanksgiving through New Years without so much as a dropped cone. With a new holiday on the horizon, off came the old, and up went the new.

Materials:

  • As many free grape vines as I could get.
  • Twine.

I busted into my collection of vines (graciously harvested by my Dad last fall) and set out to make something sweet and new, something particularly heartsy-fartsy.

Dried vines harvested by Dad.

I started by unraveling all of the vines and removing the dried leaves and ganglier shoots by hand. With a simple snip-snip of the gardening shears, I chopped them apart into pieces of equal length (obviously if you try this, use your own judgement on how big you want the heart-y heart to be… mine were 26″ pieces).

Cutting pieces into 26" sections.

When I had what seemed like enough pieces of trimmed vine to create a semi-voluminous structure (used all that I had, except for the already perfectly round wreath that was in the pile), I tied the ends together and slowly began to force the branches into a rounded shape.

Torquing the pieces and tying the ends together.

There was crackling. There was squeaking. But nothing broke. I took it slowly, and by the time I had them torqued around to a single point at the bottom of the heart and tied together, the branches were feeling semi-compliant with my request of them. Even still, I harnessed down those heart-lumps with twine to force them into a permanently curved position to hold their form and stay nicely rounded.

Bound together, the heart is taking shape.

To further train the dried out vines to hold this specific shape, I misted them with water in the basement and left the wreath bound flat to dry overnight.

In the morning, it was looking pretty good. Still heart-y and flat, always a win when you don’t really know what’s going to happen. Hung on a hook, it continued to hold it’s form.

Heart wreath, almost done.

So I unbound it. And nothing shifted. Hurrah!

I neatened up the string ties that still hold the branches together, and hung it on existing hook on the door. That’s about as lovey-sappy as I’d like the front door to look. No additional treatment required, although I did consider painting one of the vines on each heart-half pink to pop a little. A subtle pink infusion wouldn’t have been rejected if I had considered it sooner. That’s an idea you can run with instead.

Heart wreath, hung.

I’m kind of digging the scale of the heart; it’s happy and enormous, almost the full width of the door. Because it’s only made of a few vines, it’s narrow too, so it’s not protruding out far and getting smushed by the storm door.

Getting my Valentine's adoration on with a heart wreath.

It’ll do for a few weeks, because the holiday is officially around the corner. Cute heart happiness.

Any sappy-love door decor happening at your pad?

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Decor  / DIY  / Entryway  / Holiday-Related Projects

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

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Emily
February 2, 2012 at 8:06 pm
Reply

Very Cute. I’ll have to ask my father-in-law to keep some vines from their little Western NY home vineyard.



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  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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