Thursday, December 6, 2012

DIY Christmas ornament wreath

About four years ago I saw this little beauty online:


A stunning ornament wreath from Eddie Ross that I drooled over for years. I was lucky to come across such a find — mind you, I wasn't in the habit of trolling craft sites, and these were the days before Pinterest and before the explosion of Mommy Blogs, the days where if you didn't already have creativity flowing you had a much harder time finding simple yet beautiful DIY projects such as this.

Anyway.

This wreath has been in my mind every Christmas since then, and I FINALLY got my act together and made my very own:


Ta da!!!

And, because everything looks better on Instagram:




The instructions from Mr. Ross are simple and few, but I have some "been there, done that" lessons from the field I'd like to add. So, below I will give the instructions in bold with my advice to follow...

1. Start with a wire hanger, then untwist it and bend it into a circle. If you have puny muscles, like mine, this is harder than it sounds. Nevertheless, it can be done in a snap.

2. Gather ornaments for your wreath. This requires a LOT. I have about 35-40 on here, but it still didn't fill the length of the entire wire hanger. That's because, as you can see, they all have to fit together like a puzzle to make it look filled out.

3. Glue the metal caps to each ornament. I didn't do this step, but I sure wish I had. Two ornaments popped off and one broke because I was lazy. So please, glue the metal caps to each ornament. Also: If you have ornaments that are precious or sentimental, may I recommend you save those for other purposes. You wouldn't want them to be casualties of crafting gone wrong.

4. Slide the ornaments onto the wire. I started putting mine on willy-nilly, figuring the random configuration would add to the charm. I think it does, but because I used ornaments of different sizes, some of the proportions are a bit off. So, my advice is to plan ahead or at least have a good idea of which order the ornaments should be strung so that everything comes out consistently and evenly.

5. Twist the ends of the wire together to form a wreath. Again, easier said than done. It took a bit of muscle (or maybe I just used ridiculously a strong hanger — yeah, let's go with that) and, since I didn't have enough ornaments, I had to pull the wire closer together than it wanted to go. This was the part of the project where three of the ornaments popped off, so use your muscles but be careful.

6. Hang with a ribbon and enjoy. No advice here. This is one step I could handle with ease.

Merry Christmas!

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