Christmas Ball Wreath…TUTORIAL!

Oh wow!  I’ve been doing Pinterest-inspired crafts for about a month and suddenly I’m doing a tutorial.  Are you kidding?  I never thought I was crafty enough (or that my motor skills were fine-tuned enough) to teach someone else how do to a crafty thing.

So, anyway… This is not a completely original idea, but it’s got my own tweaks to it.

I saw a wreath on Pinterest that was from a blog about making a “wintertime” wreath.  Let’s define “wintertime” wreath.

Wintertime wreath: *noun* a wreath that you can hang at Christmas time but do not have to take down after Christmas time because it does not contain Christmas colors or ideals, thus can represent “winter” instead of just Christmas.

So, I used inspiration from above blog and came up with my own way of making the wreath.

Let the tutorial begin! (pictures included).

Use the pliers (or other tool) to untwist and open up the hanger.  Bend the open hanger into a circle (or as close as you can get).  My hanger wasn’t perfectly round, but the bulkiness of the ornaments covered that imperfection and it looks round!

Open your packages of non-Christmas colored ball ornaments.

Thread the ornaments onto the wire hanger so that they fit as tightly together as possible.

Note: I hung my hanger on a hanging rack so I could use two hands.  Plus, as you add more ornaments, it gets heavy.

As you group your ornaments together, use hot glue to hold them in place. WARNING: Beware of glue strings!

I started my ornaments at the bottom, then arranged them in two halves.  You can always push them to the opposite side and make it one continuous grouping.  Whatever floats your boat!

Fill up the hanger with ornaments but make sure you can still re-close the hanger.

If you look closely at the picture above, you can see that I did not re-twist my hanger closed, I used a rubber band to hold it together.  If you have enough space to get your tools in there to close it – great! I didn’t, so I had to improvise.

Now, you’ll need some type of “gap filler” – I used these little silver balls on a wire twisty things I found at Hobby Lobby.  You can use whatever you want to fill in the spaces between the balls so the hanger doesn’t show. (with my little twisty things, I bound them together in little bundles with floral wire)

Using more hot glue to fit the fillers in the gaps.

Next, pick a ribbon to make a bow.

I have to admit, I had to go on YouTube to find a tutorial on how to make bows for wreaths.  But, it didn’t take me but a few minutes to figure it out.  So, make your bow to cover any gaps at the top of the hanger.  You also want to be able to cover the hook of the hanger.  I used some leftover silver-ball twisty things and hot glue to hold my bow into place.

Then hang your wreath wherever you please and admire!

Ta-dah!  A wintertime wreath!

And that ends my first craft tutorial (I hope it makes sense).