Christmas Wreath Tutorial

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! :) We sure did and I enjoyed being able to spend so much time together as a family. One of the many projects I had wanted to complete this year was a Christmas ball wreath and I LOVE how it turned out!! I took lots of photos while I was creating the wreath and wanted to put together a photo tutorial so I could share it here on my blog.

To start off, you need to purchase a metal wreath frame (mine was $2.47 from the local craft store--remember the bigger it is, the more ornaments it will use) and you will need more ornaments than you think you will...trust me on this one!  I ended up using 2 boxes of ornaments in each color (4 boxes of 24 total, but I did have leftovers of all colors) and that was mainly because I was doing a pattern with the large and small ornaments in each color. If your ornaments were all the same size, you could use some that had glitter to add an extra accent. I will say to make sure you use the SHATTERPROOF ornaments if you are hanging this wreath on your front door! If it will only be hung inside on a wall for an accent, it probably doesn't matter. I fell in love with some glass ornaments and have had to replace a few because that's what I used for my wreath...lesson learned. I also went back after Christmas and purchased some shatterproof ornaments on clearance so I could make another one for next year in some different colors.  You will also need LOTS of glue sticks and a hot glue gun, some jingle bells, 26 gauge wire and ribbon of your choice.  The jingle bells and ribbon I was able to purchase before Christmas on sale 50% off so I was thrilled!

  Start by laying your first row of ornaments onto the wreath base and hot glue them down. I turned all my ornaments so that the metal hanging tops were face down.

Here is a picture of the underside of the wreath at this point.

Then to add a little stability to this base layer, I used the wire to anchor the hanging tops of each ornament to the wire base. I just basically cut a short piece of wire (3 inches or so) and threaded it through the hanging loop and around the wire base, then twisted it like a bread tie. I did add a little dot of hot glue to the twisted wire to keep it in place.

Once you have finished that step, you are ready to start adding your second layer of ornaments. I started on the outside and created a pattern with my colors, using smaller sized ornaments. Here you can see as I started creating my pattern. All these ornaments were attached with hot glue only.

The next step was to work on the inside edge of the wreath and add your layers there. I created a pattern to follow on the inside using the smaller ornaments as well and glued them all down until I had the basic wreath size I was wanting.

The next step is to fill in the gaps on the top side of the ornaments. Right now, your wreath will be very flat looking with the three rows of ornaments (base, inside and outside rows) and there is still large spaces between the small ornaments. This next set of ornaments will give it more of a full look and create a top layer that will be perfect for the extra embellishments. Here's what it will look like when you are finished with that step.

 Now it's time to add your extra "embellishments". I used silver jingle bells and some loops I created with green wired ribbon.  To make the loops, I cut 4 inches of wired ribbon, then put hot glue on the bottom edge, and folded the ribbon over to create a loop. When that dried, I added glue to half of the bottom edge and folded the ribbon over in half  to make a pleated loop. When this dried, I opened up the loops with my fingers and fluffed them before I glued them into spaces in my wreath. I love the pop of the green color and the jingle bells were added last, filling in any other spaces I had open. This sounds so festive when your door opens and I love the extra sparkle that the bells bring to the wreath.

By the time you get done with all this hot gluing, you will have glue strings coming out from every direction. The easy way to clean most of it up is to pick off the biggest thickest pieces with your hands once it's all dried, then use your heat tool to melt the smallest strings of glue. Be careful to not use your heat gun too long over the surfaces (especially your ribbons), but keep the heat tool moving.

The last step is to use a longer piece of wire to create a hanging loop. I don't have a picture of this step, but I pretty much used a long piece that I doubled back on itself to create a stronger loop, then I twisted it around two points on the metal wreath base to create a loop. I used a wreath hanger to hang it from my door and I'm thrilled with the results! The glass balls really do catch the light all day long and seem to glow...so pretty!

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!!