Wreath Tips

Did you catch Emilee's creepy wreath post yesterday? I so want to make that now and hang it on someone's door for next year. Continuing with the wreath ideas (because wreaths are in huge right now) I have a double Pinstrosity post for you. Today, I give you...the ornament wreath. 

The Original Pin

http://www.eddieross.com/eddie_ross/crafts/page/14/

I'm not sure if I'd hang that up during Christmas or Easter, but they did a good job with it either way. Gretchen saw it and decided to make one of her own. She said, "Here's my attempt at the Wire Hanger Wreath by Eddie Ross. I think it's a pretty good attempt, though I made it harder on myself than it needed to be...". I don't know about you, but I'm an expert and making something harder than it has to be. And after reading Gretchen's story, I'm pretty sure I would have taken her exact route too. 

The Pinstrosity

And now you're probably doing what I did..."That looks great! That's not a Pinstrosity." But Gretchen has some great do's and don'ts to give all of us from her experience. 

"After happening across this project on Pinterest, I figured it would be pretty easy, and I immediate rushed out and bought a large container of shatter-proof ornaments - I 'guestimated' how many I would actually need.  And thankfully, I had ONE wire hanger in the house (Joan Crawford would have loved me!)."

"Now, even though the directions clearly said to hot glue each cap onto the ornament to assure they would stay attached during stringing, I decided to forgo this step - mostly b/c I couldn't find my glue gun, and I didn't want to buy another one. I've probably got three hot glue guns in the house, and couldn't find a single one of them; I was being just stubborn in not buying another.  This would come back to bite me in the rear a bit, but I pushed on."

"After untwisting the hanger, I started stringing the ornaments in what I hoped was a random pattern. Unfortunately, there were more red ornaments than green or white by about 2:1, so the red turned out a bit more prevalent than I wanted. My wreath looked WAY too angry!  I ended up unstringing all the balls and using some extra ornaments I had that were silver-toned in an effort to break up the red.  I was somewhat satisfied, but in the future, I'd probably use a lot more random colors/designs like in the original."  

"Once I got all the ornaments on the wire, I had to cut off the end of the wire - it was way too long. I didn't realize that even though I got a big container of ornaments, b/c of the way they're bunched together, they actually don't go very far in the project." 

"The tricky part came when it was time to close the wreath. When I tried to bend the wreath into a circle, the ornaments were really tight together - a necessary evil because otherwise you would see the wire.  I ended up using needle-nose pliers to bend the ends of the  wire into two hooks, then carefully clasped them together. This was the hardest part because the tighter the circle got, the ornaments kept popping off - remember that glue gun I was too stubborn to buy? But eventually, I got the ends to close, and moved the ornaments around so no wire showed through."

"Not a bad first attempt, but in the future: GLUE THE CAPS, buy ornaments of one color or lots of random colors, and get more ornaments than you think you'll need.  Otherwise, pretty easy project!"

"Happy Holidays!"

So there you have it. Make it easy on yourself and take the time to hot glue those caps. Seems so simple that it wouldn't be necessary, but those are always the clincher steps. 

Alrighty...ornament wreath number 2!

The Original Pin

I cannot find the original owner/creator of this photo. All I can find is that it was uploaded to Pinterest by someone...but spent an hour following chains only to get to dead ends and never found who uploaded this online. If you know, please let us know, we'd love to give them credit!

Combining two popular decorating fads in one craft...wreaths and monograms. Way to go ingenious person! 

Krista saw this and actually did a great job recreating it, but she also ran into a few problems and gives some good pointers on what to do in the future. 

The Pinstrosity

She says, "Had fun making this with my mom! There were a few problems we ran into. We should've started by cutting the green styrofoam ring in half so it wouldn't have been as thick.  Also, we should've wrapped black ribbon around the ring before we started hot gluing the ornaments. The ribbon would've helped hide the green styrofoam. I wanted to use blue ornaments so I feel like mine looks a little more like it belongs in whoville, but either way I still like it!"

So neither wreath is a catastrophe, but we thought these ladies tips would be highly appreciated as all of us are now getting our Christmas workshops going. Thanks Gretchen and Krista for sharing your photos and great tips! Happy wreathing everyone.