There are days when you shouldn't try to craft. I have no idea what makes a day a "no craft" day, but sometimes there is just something in the air that makes you think -- this is a bad idea. If you are like me though, you
There are a ton of cute Christmas ball wreaths out there. I know you've seen them - so cute. Anyway, I read three or four tutorials and looked at a few of pins and decided that I could so do this. You'll notice there are a few wreaths from Organized Design here, though it doesn't have a tutorial. That's simply because I don't want to place blame on any of them for what happened next.
Apparently these wreaths break into two groups: wire coat hangers and styrofoam wreaths. Macie and I took a trip to Joann's with a planned side trip to the dollar store. After spending some time in Joann's and picking up a styrofoam wreath (just in case) on sale, I decided to grab some Christmas balls (also on sale) while I was there because I could tell Macie had the "I NEED LUNCH ASAP" look in her eyes. She was also asking for a snack and to eat, but whatever, the eyes made it clear she was serious. The eyes also made it clear that we were not going to make a side trip to the dollar store for the Christmas balls. After I got the little lady some lunch and put her down for a nap, I went searching for a wire hanger in the house. I found one. Yup, one.
I grabbed the pliers and straightened out the hanger to find out that the new Christmas balls don't have a hole on the top big enough to string the wire coat hanger through. Fail. Now, I am not saying that all Christmas balls will be a fail, I am saying the new ones that have a plastic top will be a fail. If you have the old Christmas balls with the metal/wire top, then go for it!
Since I quickly found that I couldn't use the hanger, I moved on to the back up styrofoam wreath. This is not a hard process I've decided, just not one I was prepared for. You start the wreath by taking all of the little tops off the balls and then getting out your handy hot glue gun to glue the balls to the wreath. You can lay out the balls around the wreath to sort of plan your spacing and then glue away. Once I had a good outer layer, it was easier to move in to fill in the rest of the wreath. By the end you are gluing the balls to each other and not to the wreath itself. Here is what I learned, however. This method takes a lot of Christmas balls. I used up the 25 or so that I had and found that I needed a lot more. I had a half done wreath. Fail.
Luckily we had to go out anyway so I asked my patient husband to swing by Wal-Mart and I grabbed two more boxes of balls. I also decided to add a box of big jingle bells that I had gotten at Joann's. All in all, I used about 66 balls/bells and then a small filler box of mini-balls. I also burned myself about five times, but that's on me. My hot glue gun may hate me.
After all of the glue was nice and dry and I had filled in all the little spots with the mini-balls, I strung a ribbon around the wreath to use to hang it and then made a bow and glued it to the ribbon. All in all, I like the wreath. I don't think it's a hard project, but it does take some patience and a LOT of hot glue and a LOT LOT of Christmas balls. Don't be fooled by people saying you can use your leftover box of ornaments to make this - unless your leftover box of ornaments is the size of a small child. Just my thought.
Have any of you tried your hand at a wreath this year?? How'd it go?
