Making a Wreath of Remembrance (with kids!)

I found some photos, taken a few years ago when we added purple flowers to our wreath to commemorate the animals in war.

I cannot see that I have posted these before, so I thought it would be fun to show the basic process in how we create our Anzac Day wreath each year.

The ring shape is created from tracing a large plate onto cardboard - which becomes the size of the inner circle. For the outer circle, I just eyeball the correct distance, and sketch it out with pencil. Cut out using a sharp craft knife. I always do this step myself with the size of the wreath determined by how large my Guide unit is at the time. (The flower making takes quite a while, so don't make your wreath too big if you don't have many members - I've made this mistake too many times!)

The Brownie Guides do the remainder of the wreath themselves, with supervision.

Wrap the cardboard in crepe paper and glue the ends down.

Create your flowers. These were all made using felt.

Add a ribbon across the wreath and hot glue the ends onto the back, so they are not seen. Test your pens before you write across the ribbon, as many will bleed. 

Hot glue the flowers down.

Add a bow. I usually find a Youtube video for one of my oldest members to watch and follow. Example: Ribbon bow (we don't sew, instead just use hot glue). 

Hot glue the bow onto the wreath. Add a glue dot to each of the loops and tails of the bow, so that it holds its shape.

Your wreath is complete!

This is the basic design that we use almost every year. For the most part, the only thing that changes are the plates I measure the wreath shape and the flowers the Brownies make.

Here are some photos of the flowers on our 2018 wreath, to show how the look can change completely, even when the base design is identical.

This was such a fun design - even though it was definitely the busiest wreath we've ever created!