DIY: Christmas Ornament Wreaths

Day 16

DIY Ornament Wreath

Welcome to Day 16 of Blogmas everyone!  Only 9 more days until Christmas!
I'm glad you're here!

Last week I took you on a little tour of my condo and some of the Christmas decorations I've put up (but not the stuff on my Christmas Tree) and I mentioned how my friend Jessica and I made Ornament Wreaths.  Well, today I'm here to walk you through that process.

First, Jessica and I planned to make these a year in advance.  Yes, I said a year.  But that's because we are Mennonite and didn't want to pay full price for ornaments.  If you don't mind paying full price for ornaments there is still plenty of time for you to make your ornament wreath this season.  If you want to save a few dollars than read on to find out what you will need and you can gather it all up at the end of this Christmas season.

Now that we both knew we would be making these lovely ornament wreaths it was time to get inspired.  A quick image search on google turns up TONS of pictures.

After my perusal of what other people had done I was originally thinking of doing a very colourful one that would include pinks and purples and well... every colour!  So I was buying lots of ornaments in all kinds of colours.

After a little more searching and thinking about what I already have in the living room (my plan was always to put this above my fireplace and my Christmas tree is right beside it) I started to think that a silver and gold ornament wreath would look elegant there

Then I thought about my love for turquoise... and even if it doesn't go with the tree decorations I likely won't be living in this condo for forever.  And so I considered a blue, turquoise, and silver one

For the record, when looking up turquoise wreaths I did stumble on a peacock one that I did consider making... but then I thought maybe Christmas was a season that I didn't need a peacock thing in my living room.

I think Jessica and I ended up making ours around mid November 2014.  After being inspired online I knew that I wanted a blue, turquoise, silver, and green one.  I didn't care that it wasn't matchy matchy with my tree.  I cared that I would love it when it was done (and I do).

This meant that I had to go out and get more ornaments now that I knew exactly what colours I wanted.

Some I found at Goodwill 

But most of the "new" ones (the ones that I got during Christmas season 2014 and not end of the previous Christmas season) came on sale from either Target or Walmart (this was back in the day when we still had Target up here in Canada... *sigh* those were the days)

I knew I wanted a variety of looks and sizes and my friend and I had agreed that we would swap ornaments with each other for different colours (so remember those pink ones that I got at the end of the previous Christmas season.. my friend used them and I used some of her extra silver and white ones).

Get LOTS of ornaments.  You're going to think you have enough but you need LOTS... I'm willing to bet I have about 100 on mine or so (but I also wanted mine to be loaded with them).

Other than the ornaments you'll also need a foam wreath.  I got mine from Michaels because they always have those 40% off coupons and I made sure mine was white (not green) so that it would blend more if you saw it through the gaps in the ornaments. I believe I purchased the largest size they had.

Then get yourself a glue gun if you don't already have one.  I bought mine at Michaels a long time ago when I was doing some crayon art) and it was the cheapest one they sold... it works fine (most of the time).

You can find the glue sticks for glue guns at dollar stores (you can also often find the glue guns there too).

I had my friend bring over some newspapers and we spread them out over the table.  We plugged in an extension cord and power bar and heated up our glue guns.

My friend wrapped some sparkly garland around her ornament wreath and I left mine plain.

When putting on the ornaments you need to take out the metal thing at the top that you would put a hook or string through to put it on your tree.  Well... I guess you don't have to but we did.  I also tried to put that part of the ornament away from the front so that you would see the round ball part.  Use whatever you need to in order to yank that metal thing out... we used some precision screw drivers and pliers.

The first thing I started with was to put ornaments around the outside of the wreath... trying to make sure that the ornaments would sit flat for when I put up on the wall.  Then I did the inside ring.  I didn't want there to being any pattern to my wreath... I just wanted it to be random.  After I finished both of those I used some more of my bigger ornaments in the middle sections and then started filling in spaces with some of the smaller ones.  I think it likely took an hour or 2 but my friend and I are both happy with how ours turned out (she even has other people asking her to make them... maybe we can start up a little business).

My finished product:

TIPS

Make sure you have LOTS of ornaments... I can't stress this enough.  You'll be sad and frustrated and possibly never get back to it if you have to go out and get more midway through.  If you are worried that you'll have lots of extra ornaments you can do what I did and put them in a basket for some Christmas Decor or in a large vase.

Make sure you have LOTS of glue for your glue gun.

Don't buy glass ornaments... we ended up breaking at least a couple.

Start by pulling lots of those metal things off the tops of your ornaments... I just think it might go a little quicker.

If you want to wrap a ribbon around the wreath so that you are able to hang it with that later on you need to do that before you put the ornaments on.  I didn't think of this... so I just hang mine without one... it still works but I do worry that one day I will come home to find it on the floor because it just isn't as stable.