Upcycled Necktie Scrap Wreath

I use my extensive stash of thrifted men's neckties to make lots of fun things...ornaments, necklaces, hair pretties, brooches...As a result, I have lots of scraps left over. Some are large pieces, some just a few inches long. I decided to wrap them onto a wreath form to see what happened...I didn't have a particular style or pattern or heck...even an idea. Just wreath+tie scraps=who knows what :) Oh, and I didn't want to buy *anything* to do this. So I only used what I had on hand.

A 10-inch styrofoam wreath form.

Some soft, white cotton felt/batting cut into strips for wrapping around the wreath form.

I used Aleene's Foamtastic glue to hold the cotton in place, and 2 straight pins just at the very beginning to make it secure since the glue needed time to dry...and I'm impatient.

I wrapped the entire wreath in the cotton, partially to fully cover the styrofoam and partially because I knew I'd be hot gluing the tie scraps and didn't want to melt the wreath form.

Then I broke out my brand-spankin'-new zebra-print glue gun...

Picked out some random scraps left from the neckties and trimmed them with pinking shears...

...and started attaching the scraps. All of mine were pretty short, so I couldn't wrap more than once with each piece. I just secured the pieces on the back side with hot glue.

As I was close to finishing, I noticed that it didn't seem 'finished' to me...like it was missing something. So I finished with the tie scraps...

...and cut some 2.5 inch wide brown satin ribbon in half with my pinking shears to wind around the wreath.

I just twisted it loosely and randomly and spaced it out so you could still see all of the different textures and patterns of the ties...

...then decided everything is better with a rosette so I made one from the remaining ribbon and a tie scrap and attached it with my super cool zebra print glue gun and...

..ta-da! Scrappy tie wreath!

It doesn't yet have a "home" but I'm very pleased with the result! What do you think?

I would really love to get a larger wreath form, one of the plastic-covered straw ones, and use several different ties in their entirety to cover the wreath...maybe I can do that next week? :)

I'm linking up here: