Wreaths seem to be my new obsession. Last year I made some Halloween wreaths, which I still have to share with you, of course, and that kind of launched me into a wreath making frenzy. Just like my garland experience, I had made a couple of wreaths in the past and didn’t love them, and it was for the exact same reasons as the garlands: 1)I was skimpy on the fancy stuff and 2)I couldn’t tie a proper bow.
Here’s the only early wreath I still use:
A few days before Christmas a few years ago, a whole bunch of other projects hadn’t panned out and I found myself with a couple cheap pine-like garlands, a blank metal wreath form, and a bunch of glass ornaments. So naturally I decided to toss them together and see what I came up with.
I wound the garlands on top of the wreath form and wired them in place with floral wire, but if I hadn’t happened to have those things needing to be used I would have gone with just a normal cheapy pine-like wreath. Then I hot glued all the small ornaments onto the branches and tied a lame lame bow.
I hated the way it looked, because of course the bow was so jacked up, so I tried to think of what else I could do to make this interesting, so I hung three ornaments down from the center at different heights. I probably would have gotten rid of this wreath long ago if it weren’t for that detail. I still really need to replace the bow.
I came across this wreath a while back, maybe on one of those Design for a Dime type makeover shows.
It’s a great little recycling project. You take a wire coat hanger, and stretch it into a circle, then bend the hook backwards to make a hook for the wreath. Then you rip a plastic dry cleaner bag into little strips and tie them onto the hanger. You just repeat that over and over again until you can’t cram any more little strips onto the hanger, and you’re left with this great totally mod wreath.
I wanted to add a little more interest after that, so I hot glued some ornaments on the top of it.
This year I wanted to make new wreaths for my double doors. I’ve finished them for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and now Christmas. It just seems like double front doors call out for wreaths. Of course, I didn’t get around to buying anything for it until the day after Thanksgiving when Michaels was largely picked over. I was also making this after finishing a ton of other Christmas projects and I was getting a little sick of the typical Christmas color palette, so I had to get really creative with what was left.
All the stuff I kept being drawn towards didn’t seem to have anything to do with Christmas. I snapped up those little glittery presents, but I still wasn’t satisfied with the level of festivity, so I wanted to throw some ornaments on top but I couldn’t find any that worked with the color scheme.
The ornaments I ended up using were ones I painted. I bought some clear iridescent ornaments and put a couple drops of paint and a couple drops of water inside each one and shook it all around. This ended up working great and gave me exactly the touch I needed to make it all glam and fancy, but still look like Christmas instead of just a floral arrangement.
