A little twist on a favorite classic...

I'm not a big wreath person; somehow they always turn out too traditional and, well, boring to me. But I found some wreaths on etsy that just blew me away and I had to try and make one...

I love argyle prints, so I fell in love with it on a wreath, and the fact that the wreath was wrapped with yarn? Sold...

I decided to make a team one as a Christmas gift (eh? eh? great gift idea right here)... And as hard as it looks, it really didn't take me forever like I thought it would.

I actually did this kinda on my own, but later found a good tutorial on it here. I used a 12" styrofoam wreath, and it was really easy to wrap. And just a tip -- leave the yarn on the skein. It's much easier to throw a ball of a yarn through the wreath than trying to pull a really long string through over and over and over...

Then I made the little diamonds. For a 12" wreath, my diamonds were 1.75 inches tall and about 2.58" wide. They lined up almost perfectly. Then I used the black yarn to wrap around one direction, coming up and across my diamond, then wrapped it back the other way to make the argyle pattern.

I used hot glue to tack down all my yarn ends and my felt.

I printed an O and a U off on my computer in Freshman font, then used them to make my letters. I hot glued those onto the crimson and cut it out. I put some plastic mesh (found in the embroidery aisle at the craft store) onto the back of that to give it some structure, then added a second layer of crimson felt so you wouldn't see it. With that all sandwiched together, I just hot glued it to the wreath.

Then I made some felt flowers, following this tutorial again as well as a combination of this one and this one.

I used lots of hot glue on those babies as well, and that's it. Well, I did also include something to hang this with (although my clear over-the-door one fit perfectly, but it's not for me...). I just took nine strands of yarn and braided them together; I wanted it to be thin enough not to detract from the wreath, but I wanted it to be interesting at the same time. I really love it! Fun way to show some team pride...