Cheap Halloween Wreath

If you are hopping over to my blog from the Autumn Tour, “Welcome!”

Today, I thought I’d show you how to make a super easy, cheap Halloween wreath using pipe insulation, feather boas and dollar store floral picks.

For the last two years, my only decorating nod to Halloween consisted of two feather boa wreaths I threw together. In Ohio, we lived out in the country, three miles from the local village. We didn’t get trick-or-treaters and you couldn’t even see the doors to our house from the road.

This year is a different story. We live in a Utah neighborhood and rumor has it I could have upwards of 200 kids at my door, come Halloween night. Hubs and I have always loved to decorate for Halloween. Having only one door to this house, though, I thought my feather wreaths needed some sprucing up.

To make your own Wreath of the Living Dead, you will need:

• Pipe Insulation (6′ length), pool noodle, or Styrofoam wreath form
• 3-4 Feather Boas
• Straight Pins
• Black rose, crow and other black floral picks
• Duct Tape
• Black Wire
• Wire Cutters

Since I didn’t take any pictures of this project last year, I stripped one of the wreaths to show you what I used. We had some leftover pipe insulation from the hardware store that we used on a house project. I’d missed the boat on buying end-of-the-season pool noodles, so I thought this would be a good substitute. If you don’t want to do this step, buy a ready-made wreath form in the size you want.

I wanted my wreath a little bigger than the old ones. The feathers ended up so close together in them, it was hard to see the middle of the wreath.

I figured out the new size for my wreath and then cut it to fit. A bag of the pipe insulation will run less than $10 if you buy it from Walmart. You can make a couple of wreaths out of one bag, so that is certainly cheaper than the $8 you’d pay for a foam wreath form from craft store/aisle. You can also buy a 6′ length of pipe insulation (foam) from Lowes or Home Depot for around $5. Depending on the size you want, you could also get a couple of wreaths out of that.

At any rate, cut the foam to the size you want and using some duct tape, join it together, like so.

Using the straight pins, I attached the feather boa to the wreath form. There is a knot at the end of the rope inside the boa, and I just stuck the pin in the knot and then into the wreath form.

I wrapped the boa around and around the form, going inside the wreath and back out. When I got to the end of the boa, I just secured it to the wreath with a couple of straight pins.

I had four feather boas to use on this one wreath, so I kept my wraps pretty close together. Depending on the fluffiness of your boas, you could probably get away with spacing the wraps further apart. I wrapped on of the boas and then added my floral picks.

I bought some black floral picks from Dollar Tree. These were $1 each and I bought 2 crows and one of the roses and the berry looking things, so I spent a total of $4 on the picks.

Using my wire cutters, I sniped off each of the stems, leaving about 2-3″ of wire.

Once they were all cut apart, I just started poking the stems into the wreath form. First, though, I attached a second boa to the form and did a couple of wraps and then added in my picks. I wrapped my boa between the picks as I placed them so there would be fluffiness all around.

To attach the crows to the wreath form, I cut a 2″ section of black wire, bent it into a U-shape.

I then used it over the feet of the crow to hold the bird in place.

The crow feet actually came with a very thin wire poking out of the bottom of the feet, but they broke off on one of the birds when I was taking the bird off the cardboard it came on from the store. I had some wire in my stash, but a wire twist tie from a bread bag would also get the job done.

After the picks were all in place, I just added the rest of the boas. In all, it took me about 15 minutes to make. Super quick and easy.

I already owned the foam and the feather boas, so this wreath cost me $4 to make. If I had to buy all the materials, it would cost about $15 to make, depending on if you found feather boas at your local dollar store.

I love how it came out. I think it makes a fun addition to my autumn decorating. It was an inexpensive way to add some Halloween decoration to my door.

Speaking of autumn decorating, have you checked out all the fun ideas in the Autumn Tour? I met this group of gals this summer when I attended Haven. They are all amazing women and they have some great ideas for how to add some fun autumn décor to your home.