the original inspiration for this came from this magazine, that marcy posted on her blog a few months back. when i saw it, i fell in love, but being the procrastinator that i am, only decided 2 weeks ago that i would tackle it. i’m overly ambitious, have i mentioned that before?
supplies:
- 18” wire wreath form
- 4 colours of yarn – my colours were pulled from this echo park paper
- various sizes of ornaments
- glue gun
- aluminum foil (i bought a 300’ roll and probably had about 1/3 of the roll left) or various sizes of styrofoam balls
- 1 screw or nail
- optional: needle
1) rip off various lengths of aluminum foil and scrunch into balls. i probably made 3 different sizes – large (around 2.5”), medium (2”) and small (1.5”). for this size of wreath, i would make 10-15 of each size. you can always make more later, as you build the wreath. if you’re choosing to use styrofoam balls, you can skip this step.
2) wind yarn around each ball, changing directions as you go, to make it look like an actual ball of yarn. initially, i did this without a glue gun, and just tucked the ends under. but after i got a glue gun, i decided to glue the ends since a few of them were unraveling. repeat until all your balls are wrapped.
3) here’s the trial and error part. i first started by laying the wreath form so that the curve/inset is face up. i put the largest sized ball in the inset and fastened it to the form by using a needle + extra yarn. i then built up that area, using various sizes of balls and ornaments, ensuring the form was completely covered, fastening each to the form using a needle + yarn. BAD idea. it took me nearly an hour to do 1/10 of the form.
that’s when i caved and got a glue gun. hallelujah!
so then, i still fastened the largest ball to the form with a needle + yarn, but used the glue gun to adhere everything else. (i figured if i wanted to redo this next year, at least i could reuse the form.) when using the glue gun, hold in place for roughly 10-15 seconds to ensure it actually stays.
4) keep going until you’ve completely covered the form. you’ll notice as you’re working that you’ll probably need to make some extra yarn balls to cover the smaller areas, which is what happened to me.
5) use a screw or a nail to hang in desired spot!
cost:
- 18” wire wreath form - $2.50 with a 50% michaels coupon
- yarn - $2.50 each with a 50% michaels coupon (yes, dh and i went back twice so i could get the discount!)
- ornaments – already on hand from previous years, but they were from the $1 and i probably used about 2 boxes of the larger balls and 1 box of the smaller ones
- glue gun + glue sticks - $3.99 for the glue gun and $1.75 for the glue sticks from walmart
- aluminum foil - $3 from walmart
- TOTAL = $21.24
all in all, it took me about 3 nights to make it all - 1 night to roll all the balls, and 2 nights to build it. although i'm sure if i had that glue gun from the get go, i would have been able to make it in 1 night. definitely not that hard to make!
