Starbuckish Wreath

I remember seeing some very cool wreaths last year at Starbucks. Shiny ornaments and yarn wrapped balls never looked so good together. I was inspired at the time, but had already put all my Christmas decorations up. I didn’t really want to go to the trouble of making them right then.

I was reminded of that inspiration this week somewhere in blog land. I really don’t remember where, it was late one night after a long, hard run. Long hard runs usually turn my brains to mush, so I’m sorry I can’t tell you where this inspiration came from. If it came from you, dear reader, let me know.

So, I really wanted to make one, but I so didn’t want to buy anything to do it. Guess what? I succeeded.

Here’s most of the junk I used:

• Old ornaments that I just don’t care for anymore (to cover with yarn)
• Newer, shiny silver ornaments
• an old grapevine wreath
• leftover yarn
• hot glue (lots and lots)
• a glue stick
• practice golf balls (to cover with yarn)
• and not pictured, gray felt.

To make the wreath I just started wrapping yarn over the old ornaments and the practice golf balls. I found that unless I put a little coat of glue from a glue stick I couldn’t get the yarn to stay. My hands were covered with glue, but that yarn isn’t going anywhere. I wrapped what I thought I might need for the wreath, but ended up wrapping up more. It took way more ornaments and yarn balls than I thought.

Once I had the yarn balls all done I started hot gluing everything on. I learned something here: hot glue on ornaments does not really stick to a grapevine wreath. So I grabbed some felt leftover from some project and wrapped the wreath. That gave the glue something nice to stick too. After that was all done I just started gluing things on, starting with the biggest ornaments and the biggest yarn balls. I learned something else here: hot glue works great but it likes to slip off of smooth shiny ornaments. So there was a lot of holding ornaments together waiting for things to dry. But it was all worth it, I love how it turned out.

I thought it needed a little pop, so I put it over a canvas that I painted blue just for the occasion. Before the paint dried I sprinkled some silver glitter on, just for a little sparkle. I think it totally makes it, and it totally makes it stand out on the wall.

And with this project, I think we are officially done with our Christmas decorations. Unless I get a wild hare to do something else, which stranger things have happened! We’ll see.

I'm sharing this with Kimba's DIY day and Today's Creative Blog.