Valentine Ribbon Rose Wreath

My friend Ann sent me a giant box crammed with roll upon roll of red, pink, and white ribbons. Most of them wired, half of them satin, all of them extraordinary. 

Now, I should say, this wreath took a lot of ribbon to make, and yet, I used less than 20% of what Ann sent me in that box, which is extraordinary because Ann she said she sent me less than 10% of her ribbon stash, which is to say, Ann needs to start a blog ASAP so that she can take us all on virtual tours of her ribbon collection. This is something I have to see!

At first I was going to use these ribbons on my pink tree, but alas, the flocking was clashing with anything delicate as ribbons, so I reserved them for roses to use on a Valentines wreath. If you are a longtime follower, you might remember these from the bouquet I made for my bestfriend’s wedding. 

These suckers are Eee-Zee Pee-Zee (and yes that is how you spell it).

Materials: Wired ribbon, a wreath base, hot glue.  Boom.

 

1. Start with at least 24" of wired ribbon (sometimes called French ribbon).
2. Using your fingers to pinch the wire at one end, push the ribbon toward the center. Repeat on the opposite end.
3. Keep pushing and gathering until the the gathered seam is less than one third the original length0 (in this case, I started with 24" and finished with 8").

Once you have a piece of ruffled ribbon ready to go, it's just a matter of rolling, twisting and pinching.. 

Now that you have the rose all rolled up, twist off the ends to keep it in shape so you can make a bunch more roses. For a 15" wreath base, I used 35 roses. I could have gotten by with ten less, but it would have looked even cooler with ten more. It's a matter of preference.

If you like wreaths as much as I do, you have to check out Michele's Wreath Blog. It's jam packed with oodles of amazeball wreaths!