May BBA Flowers Challenge

Some of you may remember this bunny family idea that I shared earlier this spring. While I still think that it is insanely cute, it doesn't really fit with anything else in our home. I'm not sure how I decided on flowers instead. I still had a bunch of felt and paper flowers left over from last year (more on those flowers over here), which meant that this project came together really easily. And it just so happened to fit the May challenge theme.

The biggest challenge was figuring out what kind of fabric I wanted. It's very rare that I use fabric for crafting. I intentionally don't keep much of it on hand because I simply don't need to spend the time and money building a stash of material that I will hardly ever use. This meant that I had to purchase something. I eventually settled on burlap.

Materials

•  A set of embroidery hoops. I picked up a set of five in two different sizes on Etsy. I paid less than half of the retail value. If you scout a lot of thrift stores, you may be able to score a set for even less.
• Felt rectangles and buttons of your choosing for flowers and leaves in the colors. Michaels has felt rectangles for less than 30 cents each. It is time consuming to make, cut, and glue these flowers and leaves, but they are very inexpensive to make. Again, you can read more about them here.
• Fabric of your choosing for the hoop backings. I bought half a yard of burlap and used about half of it.
• Tacky glue (for the flowers)
• Nails (for hanging the hoops)

Even if you bought everything new for this project, you most likely wouldn't spend more than $30. I know that many people already have a lot of the materials on hand.

The assembly process is pretty self-explanatory. It's important to take your time stretching and cutting the fabric so you end up with evenly stretched fabric and closely cut ends. I used more tacky glue to attach the flowers to the burlap. As you will not be handling these pieces, it is not necessary to use a really strong glue like E-6000 or an epoxy.

I completely winged the hanging job and did readjust a few of the hoops in the process to get a look that I liked. I know that many people will do something much more sophisticated to get a certain aesthetic, but that's pretty much exactly how the hanging process goes around here.

I'm really happy with my little flower hoops. I've been slowly filling out one of the wall spaces in my office area of the basement, and this set is a great final touch.

One of the best aspects of this project is that there are so many ways that you can customize it. With different fabrics and colors, you could easily create a completely different aesthetic. There is no reason to feel limited to flowers either. After all, my original inspiration was the bunnies.

I used this project for the May 2013 Blogging Business Artisans Flowers Challenge. If you enjoy these types of challenges, love blogging, and are looking for a new team on Etsy, consider joining us.

Have you been working on any new home decor?