DIY Balloon Wreath

I've seen many versions of this type of wreath lately and since my son's birthday was last month, I decided I needed to make one before his party! I plan to use it for all of our family birthdays. I can change out the "M" if I want, although our last name also starts with "M", so it will work either way.

There are many tutorials out there, but here's my (fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants) version:



Supplies:
Straw wreath (or foam)
Floral pins (I bought the 1 lb. bag & will be using them for the rest of my life!)
Balloons (I bought 2 bags of 72 each & used about 3/4 of them)
Ribbon (wider makes it easier)
Fuzzy pipe cleaners (Optional)
Large painted wooden letter (Optional)



I used the straw wreath I bought at a thrift store a while back for 30 cents! I wish it was actually a little larger in size, but hey...you can't really argue with 30 cents. I left the plastic wrap on the straw to keep it contained.

Here's where I went wrong. Instead of first wrapping the entire wreath with ribbon, I started by pinning on balloons. See, I thought I was going to put balloons around the entire wreath, thus not needing any ribbon. Well, once I started out I decided that it would look better with about 3/4 of the wreath covered with balloons. So I wrapped the ribbon on the remaining part of the wreath & tried to cover the ends with balloons.




Carrying on...I thought it looked kind of plain, so I wrapped some colorful pipe cleaners around a pen to make them spirals, grouped them & glued them on. I then painted the whimsical wooden "M". I painted the edges yellow to try to make the letter stand out better. (Still wish it stood out more.) Then I tried hot gluing the letter to the balloons. Note to self: (and to you): Hot glue does not stick to balloons. At least it didn't for me. I tried another type of glue with no luck. I finally tied the letter on with a piece of red pipe cleaner. At least this way it's removable & I can use other letters or numbers if I want. So that ended up working out.




Here's how it turned out: