Clover Wreath on Canvas

Hello everybody! It's time to party, St. Patrick's style! I wanted to do something a little more "me" this year since it is not a holiday I normally decorate for. But with all the parties for it, how can I resist? Thanks to "A Holiday Haven", we get to do one until the 17th!

First, what to do? I decided to use one of the old canvas I bought for my daughter who's now in college. She never used it so I took it back. I'm also not a patient artist so I used my only clover stamp that I picked up from Michael's several years ago and after tracing a big circle on the canvas, I flooded it with the stamp to create my wreath.

I also drew some "rogue" clover leaves which just couldn't play nice and just floated their day away.

Then... I thought, "it's too plain" and I really didn't have anymore desire to just keep stamping more clovers on so I traced the "wreath" with my never-used-but-was-on-clearance-so-it-was-bought set of embroidery floss. I chose three colors. I don't know if the stitch I did has an actual name but it held the shape perfectly.

 I used green, yellow and yellow-green. I tried to do a rough simulation of a round celtic knot by doing a simple over/under stitching.

 Here's the first two colors perfectly forming the wreath.

 To secure each color, I did three different kind of stitches and as you can see, they are all secured at each braid, keeping the shape intact.

The wreath looked great but it was still too plain so I decided to sew "gold" (yellow) and "emerald" (green) coins (buttons). I played it up as if the clovers caught some on the wreath.

 Then it inspired me to color those ones in with colored pencils.

 I gave the rebel clovers different shades to simulate more sunlight caught on their leaves.

 The others, I followed the "yellow on yellow" and "green on green" scheme to give the wreath more depth.

Then I used a green and gold foil ribbon, made some freehand celtic knot (I hope) and climbed it up the wreath.

This is not for the quick crafter; but this was also done on a whim, So in total, I spent almost 12 hours over 2 days.

Tomorrow, I'll share my first crack at real Celtic knots!

Thanks for looking! Keep the party going! My turn to go see yours! 

This wouldn't be a tablescape blog without some...

TABLESCAPING IDEAS: (Brain is seeing green) There are very few holidays that automatically ring "fun" such as St. Pat's so why not have fun with your table? Use lots of live greenery to simulate the Emerald isle and you're set! Green, white, gold, yellow, yellow green, doesn't matter! Use them all and just have fun being Irish for the day!