Making a Wreath

(Okay, this is my last Christmas post for 2008.  If I had been on the ball, I would have been posting this during the holidays, but alas, I was not on the ball, I was vacationing.)

Speaking of balls… the only after-Christmas-sales that we made an effort to get to were the ones that offered Christmas ornaments and decorations.  So we were at Target by 7:15, just in time to join the masses in the fight for twinkling lights and fake trees.  (How else do you think my mom decorates those four Christmas trees? It’s all about buying things on sale the day-after-Christmas.)  I’m actually glad we got there early because things were going fast.  While I had all of the ornaments I needed for next year’s tree, I wanted to make an ornament wreath so I needed to stock up.

I first read about this project on Eddie Ross’s website and loved the beautiful wreath he made of pink, blue and white ornaments.  (Something to keep in mind – depending on the color of the balls, these wreaths could be used for different seasons, not just Christmas.)  

My mom and I decided to make ours with red and gold.  So we loaded our carts with ornaments of all sizes and textures.  Some had glitter, some had small jewels, and some were just plain shiny.  We got about 80 in all.

After bringing them home, we made a work station out of the dining room table and got busy.  With a glue gun, we glued the tops of the ornaments together so they wouldn’t pop off.  Important first step (as we found out later with a few that we had missed). 

It didn’t take long, just a drop of glue did the trick.

Then we were ready to sort.  While not a necessary part of the process, with so many ornaments, it helped to get an idea of how we wanted the wreaths to look.

We also made sure that there were enough small, medium and larger balls with which to work.  The smaller ornaments were necessary because they filled the space between the larger balls.

Once the ornaments were ready, it was time to begin the fun part.  We took a regular wire hanger…

and bent it into the shape of a circle.  (If I were to do it again, I would use a thinner, white wire, instead of the thick gold wire hanger that we used.  It was a little more difficult to tie when we were done.)

Oh, and it helps to have a look of concentration on your face.  Makes the process go a lot smoother.

Once the wires were ready…

we began to string the balls.

There was no real rhyme or pattern that we were following,

we just made sure they looked pretty together and that the smaller ornaments took up any space left by the bigger ornaments.

Before long, the wreath began to take shape.

Then came the hardest part – trying to tie the top of the hanger together (this is where a thinner wire would have been nice).  Good thing that we had a strong brother-in-law nearby to help.

With the wreath done, we just needed a bow to hide the hook part of the hanger.  The hook was necessary as that’s how the wreath is hung, but we definitely wanted it hidden so that it looked pretty. 

Thankfully, my mother is an expert maker of bows.  Doesn’t that bow look fantastic?  

I tried to tie my own bow, but it didn’t work so well and I had to call in reinforcements.

But the end result wasn’t bad for only an hour’s worth of work.  So if you have extra ornaments lying around from your holiday decorating, you may just want to put them together for this little project.  Or, you could just wait until next year’s after-Christmas sale.  Either way, you’ll be happy with the end result – a beautiful and elegant wreath for the holiday.