Sunny Days Himmeli Wreath and Summer Celebration

I am so excited to be teaming up with some super talented bloggers (seriously some of my faves!) this week to bring you loads of summerlicious projects, which you will find at the end of this post.

But first – can I tell you guys something? This is a little embarrassing, but I just took my winter wreath off my door about a week ago. Yeah….

Oh, and by the way, my winter wreath was, uh, pretty wintery:

About Easter time I took off the gold bow and added a pink one, telling myself that those snowy pom-poms could pass for little bunny tails. And then, about a month ago (when, long after Easter, the “bunny tail wreath” was still hanging around), a friend who came over mentioned something about snowballs after looking at our wreath. Okay, fine. I get it. The completely off-season wreath is now gone, and I am oh so happy with it’s replacement.

I have been wanting to try some kind of himmeli project for a while now, and the himmeli wreaths I have seen always remind me of suns, so I thought it would make the perfect summertime door decor.

I followed Mandi’s himmeli wreath tutorial over at Vintage Revivals, and if you follow me on instagram, you would have seen this little sneak peek a while back:

(And if you don’t follow me on instagram, why not? C’mon, let’s be friends. I’ll even give you heads up on clearance deals at Target. It’s true.)

Anyway – Here’s what you will need to make one:

• cocktail straws
• wire
• pliers
• spray paint
• chipboard
• acrylic craft paint
• baker’s twine

I followed Mandi’s tutorial pretty exactly, except that I used 4 inch long straws instead of 4.5 inch long straws, because… I’m not sure why. At first, I thought I needed more than eight sections to make my wreath connect into a circle, but when I was completing the last step, I realized that was not going to work and I was not smarter than the tutorial. (Shocker, I know.) It was kind of cool how it came together at the end. I definitely recommend giving this one a try, and I’m sure I will be doing some more himmeli experimenting in the future.

I used a thicker floral wire because it was what I had on hand, but next time I would try using a thinner wire, which I think would be a bit easier to work with. Using the thicker wire, I found a pair of pliers to be very helpful for threading the wire back through the straws.

After the wreath was all completed, I gave it several (and I mean many) coats of Rust-Oleum Fluorescent Yellow Spray Paint. I probably should have done a primer first, because those black straws needed lots of paint to go really yellow. They went a bit more green than I was wanting at first:

When my wreath was finally yellow, I added a little “sunny days” banner. I wanted something summery, but didn’t want to actually include the word “Summer” just in case we have a repeat of the wreath that never goes away. And here in Vegas, pretty much every day is sunny, regardless of season.

To make the banner, I cut out two sets of the phrase from chipboard using my Silhouette Cameo. I painted one set black with craft paint, and left the other as is.

Then, I sandwiched baker’s twine between the two letters and glued them together using plain ol’ Elmers glue and a little brush. I tied that banner on the wreath, and it was ready to go redeem my sad front door.