The perfect Door Decor for every Season

I had the idea to make a welcome sign that could change with the seasons and decided that one with a little vase attached would work quite well as you can change out the flowers as the seasons change!

Fresh flowers in the spring and summer that could be changed out more often, or dried flowers in the fall and winter.

The little ‘vase’ is just a repurposed glass yogurt container and it is attached onto a rustic wooden sign with a bit of copper strapping from the hardware store and a couple small screws. I added a couple of vintage looking bells for a bit of interest, though those could easily be left off or replaced with something else – perhaps a little clay star or heart?

small space living

I thought this would be the perfect door décor for someone who lives in a small space and doesn’t have room for storing a door wreath for each season. All you need is a little sprig of fresh or dried flowers and your door will suit any season!

Flower ideas by season

Here are some ideas to get you started with what to display in your door vase by season – these are just a few suggestions, there are endless possibilities for flower combinations to place in your welcome sign vase! It is probably best to stick with small flowers and not ones with large/heavy heads as these won’t stay too well in such a small, shallow vase.

Spring

• boxwood
• pussy willow
• crocus
• forget me not
• primrose
• lily of the valley

Summer

• lavender
• lilac
• yarrow
• marigold
• coreopsis
• geranium
• rose

fall

• cornflower
• cosmos
• globe amaranth
• verbena
• alyssum
• aster
• statice

Winter

• dried baby’s breath
• dried yarrow
• dried lavender
• holly
• dried boxwood
• pine
• dried bunny tails
• dried grasses

Welcome sign with vase tutorial

what you will need

• small rustic wooden sign (Michael’s has a few to choose from in various sizes)
• letter stencils (unless you want to freehand it – I’m never happy with my hand lettering so went the stencil route! I got these Martha Stewart ones from Michaels)
• small glass jar or small vase or milk cup
• white acrylic paint + small paintbrush
• copper strapping – the stuff I got is made by ‘Dahl’ – it is 1/2 ” 22 gauge from Home Depot
• wood screws to fit holes in strapping – I used #4 – 3/8 inch from Home Depot
• screw driver
• vintage look bells
• twine
• stapler
• glue gun

1. Start by planning where to put your lettering. I stencils my letters quickly onto a piece of cardstock, just so I could see how they fit and would look. Make sure you leave enough room between where the jar will sit and the lettering so that your lettering doesn’t end up covered by flowers!

2. Lay out the letter stencils on the sign. The stencils I got have adhesive on the back, which is a big help keeping them in place!

3. Once your letters are in place, lay the glass where you intend to secure it and put a few flowers in just to make sure your lettering won’t be covered when it’s all assembled.

4. Begin painting the stencil with the white acrylic paint.

5. If your stencils overlap a bit you’ll need to let each letter dry before moving on to the next one.

6. Once your letters and all painted on and have dried, you’re ready to assemble the rest of your sign.

I had these vintage looking bells from making Christmas ornaments but thought they’d go nicely for this project since it is rustic-looking and thought bells would be a nice touch. You can leave them off if you’d like or add something else to the top!

7. Cut a short piece of twine (about 4″ or so) and thread it through the tops of the bells. Hang the two ends of the twine over the back of the sign at the centre and then secure the ends to the back with either a hot glue gun or a stapler.

Here is the twine secured to the back. I just used a regular stapler and it worked perfectly.

8. Time to add the vase to your sign! You will need your vase, hot glue gun, the copper strapping, screws and a screwdriver.

9. Find the spot on the sign board where you’d like to place your vase. Put a small amount of hot glue in the middle of where you’d like to place the vase and then press the glass firmly onto the glue. The hot glue will help the glass not move around as you put on the copper strapping and also give it a bit of extra strength so it doesn’t slide out of the strapping once your sign is in use.

10. Once the glass vase is secure, pull out a length of copper strapping and bend it across the glass and pinch it in on either side. You will need one segment with a hole to sit on either side of the glass – this is where you’ll place your screws.

11. Once you know how long the copper strapping needs to be, bend the strapping back and forth to break it off, or use wire cutters. I did the bending method and it released within a few bends.

12. Now screw in one screw on either side of the vase.

13. Find some flowers/plants – either fresh or dried – to place in your vase.

Your welcome sign is ready for hanging! Don’t forget if you’re using fresh flowers to add a little bit of water to the vase first.

Change out the flowers to your liking and have fun picking flowers to display according to the season!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial – please let me know if you’ve tried making this project yourself and how it turned out!

Keep scrolling down for a few more photos of the finished project and arrangement ideas..

When I have an idea for a new craft, I always look around my house to see if there is anything I can reuse or repurpose to avoid having to buy something new. It’s always great to find that I can use something that might otherwise have just gone in the garbage., no matter how small. I figure that every bit counts in reducing waste! When I thought of making plant markers, I looked around and saw some chopsticks that had come with a takeout order and thought they would be perfect for the job!

I love being surrounded by plants and flowers and have always admired those who can grow things and are able to identify plants easily. Sadly, in our house, we are all brown thumbs! Recently though, I have been trying to change my brown thumbs to green by trying my hand at actually keeping some plants alive for longer than a few weeks or months.

I think my lack of success with plants has much to do with how forgetful I am. When I come upon the poor, brownish-looking forgotten things, I’m always somehow a little shocked that they’re in such a state. Really, complete plant incompetence here.

Happily, I am changing my ways! My English ivy is thriving…several pots of it even. I’ve been doing little snippets and new little baby ivy plants are growing. And now, here I am growing things from seed. Well, the success of that remains to be seen. Having ordered these little packets of seeds from Etsy, I realised I would be in need of some plant markers to keep track of all my new, confusing-looking plant matter. For I know, as soon as I’ve got those little guys in the garden, I’ll surely be pulling them out as weeds if I don’t have anything to mark their place and help me remember where I’ve put them!

The seeds I ordered are all types which will hopefully produce lovely flowers for drying to be used in wreaths and as photo accents: River Statice, Pincushion, Baby’s Breath and Bunny Tails…they’ve all got lovely scientific names too, but I had a feeling most of them were so long they wouldn’t fit on my tags. Anyway! I’ve already got little seedlings of the Baby’s Breath and Statice so things are moving in the right direction. The raccoons round here have not been helping much though, so I’ve been bringing all the various pots in at night and then back out in the morning for lots of sun. If I forget and leave them inside, next thing I know the baby is elbow-deep in dirt and I’ve got to start all over. Between babies and raccoons, it’s been a bit of a challenge!

Back to the garden markers (which is likely what you’re here for) – they are quite simple to make up. I would say the trickiest bit is getting the little screw into the chopstick – it helps to poke a hole first and then screw in the eyelet with pliers. I painted some of the chopsticks but also left some in their natural state and I think they look quite lovely both ways!

I already had all the metal stamping tools and brass blanks so decided to use those for the identifying tags. If you’ve not tried metal stamping before, it is quite easy to do, so give it a try! Though it does add up to buy the tools required, they do come in handy for lots of other craft projects and for making last minute gifts. I think the plant markers turned out quite nicely and they do the job of keeping track of my new plants, which is the main thing!

How to Make Repurposed Garden Markers

What you will need:

• Wooden chopsticks
• 25mm brass stamping blanks – make sure to buy ones with a little hole in them
• 8mm x 4mm eyelet screws
• 6mm Jump rings – such as are used in jewelry making
• Needle-nosed pliers
• Metal stamping tools: steel stamping block (mine is the small Impressart 2″ block), Metal stamping hammer, 5/32″ metal letter stamps
• Stamping enamel
• Paint + brush- optional: you can leave yours natural if you prefer
• Optional: varnish or sealant – I didn’t use any, but for markers used outdoors, it helps to keep wood in better condition

Tutorial: How to make Repurposed Garden markers

I hope that this tutorial was clear enough, but do let me know if you try these out and have any questions.

Best wishes and happy planting!

This is quite a simple little wreath you can make up very quickly and easily! It’s great if you’d like to add a little freshness to your home or to make up as a quick and easy housewarming gift. My son (who loves making Lego stop-motion videos) inspired me to make a little stop-motion video of my own (above) to show how easily the wreath comes together – now that I have a proper tripod hopefully my future stop-motions will be a little less wonky!

I made the wreath in this tutorial with fresh boxwood and some preserved baby’s breath. Boxwood is great for wreaths because it lasts quite a long time before it starts to lose colour and go brittle and baby’s breath lasts well even if you just hang it to dry. To make your wreath last even longer, I would recommend preserving the boxwood before putting your wreath together using the glycerin method – I will post the instructions for that below.

I used the glycerin method to preserve some fresh eucalyptus I bought from a lovely little shop here in Toronto called Pictus Goods. Pictus sells fresh as well as dried flowers and I love the big bunch of eucalyptus I got from there a few months back – they’re still looking great thanks to preserving them with glycerin. Pictus is an eco-conscious flower shop and I love to support such lovely businesses

Boxwood and baby’s breath are fairly easy to come by so I thought they would work well in this simple wreath. Many people will have (or know someone who has) boxwood in their yard and baby’s breath is often found in fresh flower bunches and is easily saved and dried, so hopefully you will be able to attain both of these fairly easily. Of course, you can also add in whatever other plants and flowers you fancy!

how to preserve boxwood with glycerin

what you will need for preserving boxwood

This makes a small amount of solution for preserving boxwood, if you want to preserve a lot of stems, you will want to double or triple this amount. The most important thing is to make sure that your solution is made up of 2 parts water to 1 part glycerin.

You can use this method for preserving a number of plants including baby’s breath, statice, eucalyptus and many more – just be sure to leave out the green dye if preserving flowers such as baby’s breath.

• 1 cup hot water
• 1/2 cup glycerin (you can find this at most drugstores)
• 1 tsp green food colouring – I used the gel food colouring
• 1/4 tsp citric acid powder
• Bowl or bucket that you won’t need for awhile (ie. around 1-2 weeks)
• Boxwood stems – choose the best quality stems without any dryness or missing leaves.

1. Mix glycerin, food colouring and citric acid into the hot water, stirring well until all ingredients have dissolved completely into the water.
2. Tap the end of each boxwood branch with a hammer to break up the end (this helps the plant draw up the solution more easily)
3. Once your solution is cool, place the boxwood stems in the bowl and make sure the cut ends of all the stems are immersed in the solution and not too crowded – you might want to use multiple containers so the stems have plenty of room.
4. Place boxwood somewhere it won’t be disturbed.
5. Let sit for around a week or two or until it has soaked up all the solution.

This preservation technique is wonderful for preserving plant materials as it makes plants pliable and preserves their colour for quite a long time!

sweet spring & summer wreath tutorial

what you will need

• Boxwood stems
• Baby’s Breath stems
• Floral stem wire
• Brass ring – the one I used is 9 inches diameter
• Piece of twine – about 20 inches long.
• Silk ribbon – about 14 inches long

how to make sweet spring & summer wreath

Step 1: Trim your stems of boxwood so you have a variety of larger (above) and smaller (below) pieces.

Step 2: Take off the lower-most leaves on each stem so it will be easier to attach to the ring.

Step 3: Prepare the baby’s breath by cutting a few small pieces and divide into two bunches. Cut a length of silk ribbon about 14 inches long. My piece in the photo was way too short, I had to cut another!

Step 4: Cut your floral wire into a few shorter lengths of about 4 inches long.

Step 5: Take one of your short pieces of wire and wrap it onto the brass ring a couple times, leaving a length to the side, as shown.

Step 6: You are first going to attach the larger boxwood stems you prepared: lay a piece on top of the brass ring where you placed the wire and wrap the wire over the stem and around the underside of the ring a couple times.

Step 7: Now start attaching some of the smaller stems of boxwood in the same manner, adding more wire as needed. I found it’s easier to work with smaller pieces of wire, especially if you need to take a piece off the make an adjustment – then you won’t end up having many pieces fall off if they were attached with one wire.

Step 8: Continue added wire as needed and building up the boxwood stems adding several small pieces atop one another. I kept my wreath fairly spare, but you can add as many as you’d like!

Step 9: Once you’ve got all your stems on as you’d like them, take one more piece of wire and wrap around the middle of everything to make sure it’s all secure.

Step 10: You can twist the stems a little to arrange them so that the tops of the leaves are mostly facing outwards.

Step 11: Now it’s time to add the baby’s breath! Take one little bunch of flowers and lay them so the stems are in the middle of the boxwood – attach them with the floral wire in the same way as the boxwood. Attach your second bunch once you’re happy with the arrangement of the first bunch.

Step 12: Take your silk ribbon and make a nice little bow in the centre being sure to cover the wire. Trim the ends of the ribbon on an angle to avoid fraying. Cut a length of twine about 20 inches long and knot the ends, lay the brass ring on top of the twine, then pull the knotted end through the loop of the twine to secure it to the brass ring.

Step 13: Slide the flower arrangement so it is to one side of the ring, not quite to the bottom and slide the twine to the top. Very gently ‘fluff’ up the baby’s breath slightly so it’s not lying too flat.

Et voilà! Your simple spring & summer wreath is complete and ready for hanging up