Monday, December 3, 2012

DIY Ornament Wreath

This is my favorite thing.  My favorite.  I have finally gotten most of the things I wanted to blog about right off up, and I saved the best for last.  After my crayon art, I was looking for another big craft project to occupy my time and satisfy my need for creativity.  Pinterest to the rescue!  I decided to make an ornament wreath:


There are a lot of really cute ornament wreaths out there on the Internet and Pinterest, but I LOVE MINE SO MUCH.  Okay, I am bias, because it's my favorite colors (purple and turquoise), and I spent hours on it, and it goes great in my apartment.  So great, in fact, that I might cry when Christmas season is over and I have to take it down.  I did this back in October (before my button ornaments, which btw, have been a rave hit among my relatives and friends, and I have requests now for them and people are even paying me for them, crazy).  I still love looking at it every day.

Here's some of the stuff I bought.  As another blog I looked at said, you need A LOT of ornaments.  I already had a couple bulk packs I was going to use, but even so, I spent like $25 on ornaments.  If I didn't already have any, I could've easily spent $40+ buying them.  I think it's worth it, but just beware. Not all the ornaments I bought are in this picture, not even close, actually:


Also, you will want to get unbreakable ornaments.  Not all mine were and I broke a few.  Plus, I would hate it if one broke on the finished wreath and ruined the whole thing.  Also, I bought a 12" wreath straw form, and the whole finished thing is over 16" across.  It's a good size to handle your typical Christmas ornament ball.  A smaller form might be overwhelmed with standard size bulbs, and standard bulbs are easier to fine in bulk (for cheaper).

To start out, you wrap the wreath form in ribbon.  I kept going with the same ribbon to make a bow to hang it from.  Then, I put ornaments around the outside of the wreath:



After this, I did spend quite a while (okay, hours), trying to plan out how I was going to position everything (and running out to buy more ornaments.)  I am a little too OCD for crafts sometimes.  (Yes, that is a beer in the background.)  I did have to let go eventually and just start gluing though.  You can't plan it all.



After I just sort of had a loose outline for where I wanted the big ornaments, and then started gluing with just a regular ol' glue gun.


When I was all done with the ornaments, it looked like this.  I had these tiny little black foam balls with sequins from Hobby Lobby that I added last, to fill in the gaps.  Here, I had just set a couple in place.


And then, I just added more ribbon (sort of weaved it through; it would've been easier to do it before I put the ornaments on of course).  I hung it on my wall with a 3M temporary hook.  The thing weights under 3 lbs.  I love the ribbon I found, btw.  Sheer purple/turquoise mesh, matches perfect!


Even though you can spend a lot on ornaments (a good idea would be to buy them half off after Christmas), I recommend making one of these!  It looks great and it was fun.


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