After a year of hanging in the sun, my magazine leaf wreath was starting to look worse for wear. (see photo below) And, while I still really like this wreath, it’s colors have faded and it’s petals have flattened.
So, with Christmas fast approaching, I set out to make a new, holiday themed wreath.
Many hours of grueling pinterest searches led me to several possibilities:
top left / bottom left / right
I really liked each of these, but had some reservations. The space where I wanted to hang the wreath is quite narrow – between our main door and the outer storm door. I was afraid that the ornaments would be crushed, so that idea was out. I love the peppermint idea, but wasn’t sure how long it would last – I definitely didn’t want to have mints falling off every time I opened the door (I’m sure that depends mainly on what glue you use, but there again, I didn’t want to have to go buy special glue. We are going for beautiful and cheap – cheap is key.)
That left the snowflake option – it took about an hour to complete (which was probably longer than it should have, but there was some trial and error involved)
I purchased 2 packs of glittered snowflakes from Walmart and one stand alone larger snowflake/flower thing. I already had the “joy” ornament, glue gun, glue sticks, and Styrofoam sheet.
To make I first layered the snowflakes, gluing them together to form a circle. My wreath is probably 3 layers thick – I just added until I felt it was sturdy enough and looked full enough. I used every snowflake I had.
Once glued together I found that the wreath was still not able to hold its shape for any length of time. That’s when I busted out the sheet of foam, cut a simple, thin, totally not perfect circle out of the foam and glued the wreath to it, shaping and securing as I went. If you look closely between the snowflakes, you can just see the hint of the foam. Normally that would bother me, but at this point, I’m way past perfection.
I played around with the idea of hanging it from ribbon, but since I had red and silver snowflakes, and the larger ornament thing at the bottom right, the ribbon looked out of place. Plus, I already had a nail in the door from previous wreaths and didn’t feel like having to put another one in higher up to make up for the length of the ribbon. In the end, I hung the “joy” ornament from the nail I had and then positioned the finished wreath on top of that using the same nail.
I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and will definitely be using it in our holiday decorations for years to come.
How about you, have you made any fun decorations this year?
but be sure to jump back over here for an exciting announcement when you’re finished)
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