Snow Wreath

I took all my Christmas decorations down this weekend and now my house looks so empty! I've been busy working on some winter decorations to place by the front door. While finishing up a couple projects, it was driving me crazy not having anything hanging in my wreath spot. I couldn't think of a single thing to put there! All my wreaths were too Christmas-y or else it was my Valentine's Day wreath and that was too early.

I went through my stash and found a wreath I could reuse since I didn't have any extras. Luckily, when I made this St. Patrick's Day Wreath, I attached the shamrocks with pins so I plucked them off and had a yarn wrapped wreath (super extra bonus that it was already wrapped!). I wasn't that crazy about my St. Patrick's Day wreath anyway so I didn't mind losing that. I'll just have to see if I can come up with something better this year!

Ever since I made this wreath last year for my cousin, I wanted to make one for myself. Unfortunately, I didn't have all the supplies on hand. Therefore, I had to make something a little different. Luckily, I still had some leftover yarn.

I had purchased these cheap, wooden words last year with the idea of making the wreath. I painted them both white but then decided to just use 'snow'.

I wrapped the black/silver yarn over the white in a criss-cross and then once again. I glued on the snow sign and used some of those pretty crystal twigs I had left over. For some 3-D I added silver glitter mini pine cones I've been holding onto for a while. This is what I came up with:

  

I may still add more pine cones. Here's a close up of what they look like.

 

 Here it is from the side:

I also took some silver glitter glue and outlined 'snow'.

I like it! It's perfect to fill the void between Christmas and Valentine's Day.

Stay tuned as I piece my winter decorations together!

I'm sharing here!

The Posts of Christmas Past

I've only had this blog for one Christmas but I made a lot of decorations last year! I was unemployed and had a lot of time on my hands so did handmade gifts for everyone. Here are some things I did the for Christmas/winter season!

My most popular post, the Christmas bauble wreath.

Peace on Earth Wreath. This is still one of my favorites.

Snowflake Wreath

Another snowflake wreath.

Gold Leaf Wreath

Gold Berry Wreath

Green Christmas Wreath

Silver Leaf Wreath

Sparkling Dove Wreath

Poinsettia Wreath

A tutorial for a Christmas stocking.

I also did a series on spicing up your old Christmas decorations. Here are parts one, two, three, and four.

 I'm not sure I have the same amount of inspiration this year - I sure did a lot last Christmas!

Winter Wreath

Everyone is different on how long they leave their Christmas decorations up. Some take them down the day after Christmas, others wait until New Year's, and some leave them up for the whole year! I try to leave ours up as long as possible...pretty much until I get yelled at which tends to be within the first week of January. I'm going to try to leave them up until the 7th which is when we're having our family Christmas with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. It's mainly because we don't have any winter decorations. It's Christmas or nothing. I really need to work on changing that so here's an idea I had for a winter wreath.

I wrapped my straw wreath in white yarn and then took a silver twig kind of thing and snipped it into strands. I then glued each strand onto the back of the wreath.

After gluing it all around the wreath, I flipped it over to the front and began gluing the silver lines down. I made sure some overlapped and went in different directions.

Here is what it looked like finished. It's simple enough that you can even leave it like this. In fact, that's what I did for a couple of weeks.

But then I decided to add some snowflakes!

 

It's perfect for winter, don't you think?

Peace on Earth Wreath

This next wreath is my new favorite! It's very different from your typical Christmas wreath. Technically though it can be a winter wreath. I started off with this Styrofoam wreath because it was all there was at Michaels when I went shopping. These tiny, thin wreaths are more expensive than straw wreaths even though they're practically a quarter of the size but luckily I had a 50% off coupon for one item so it cost me about $2.50. I was disappointed that I had to get it at first but I actually like the shape of it. I think it takes less yarn to wrap.

I started off by wrapping it in my favorite yarn (white with the silver thread running through it).

Here it is completely covered. I didn't worry about covering it 100% because I planned on going over it with another color.

I took this amazing black/gray/silver yarn I had lying around from a couple years ago when I made some scarves for Christmas in it and started off by making little Xs all the way around it. That looked too uniform (and a little like spiderwebs so maybe this idea could double for a Halloween wreath?) so I just went around and around until I liked the way it looked. I didn't cover all the white but I made the pretty yarn prominent enough. Note: this yarn is quite wooly so it catches and snags easier than most. It took me a couple hours to do it because the hole was small but I just sat watching TV while I worked. It also left my fingers cramping terribly but it was worth it.

I then took these wooden snowflakes that I picked up from Michaels for $.29 each. Great deal, huh? I got three. I probably should have stocked up on more!

Having learned from the last time I did this, I painted them white first. Then I covered them with snow-tex. I then sprinkled them with some silver glitter, which I appear to have forgotten to take a picture of.

I also bought these glitter letters from Michaels. The glitter was coming off a bit so I coated them in mod-podge to seal. I went with PEACE but you can go for anything! They were $.99 each.

Positioned on the wreath...

I added my snowflakes and some crystal twigs I'd bought back in November because they were so gorgeous but I didn't know where to use them. I'm glad I saved them! They look just like icicles!

I'm so happy because I had a vision for this wreath and it came out exactly the way I wanted it to! FINALLY! I really hope the person it's for likes it because if not, she can give it back to me! I think I'll have to make one for myself :) I seriously love this mildly unconventional Christmas/winter wreath!!

I'm linking this up to Lolly Jane Boutique. Check out this post to see where else I'm linking up.

Snowflake Wreath

For the last month, I've been working hard on lots of different wreaths. I haven't shared any yet because they all have a Christmas/winter theme. Well, it snowed here this weekend so I think that gives me permission to start sharing a few!

I started off with a plain straw wreath that I wrapped (and wrapped and wrapped...it took me 2-3 hours) in white yarn until it looked like this:

I then covered the wreath with snowflake stickers I'd found at Michaels (I believe...otherwise it was Hobby Lobby). I peeled off the back of the sticker and used a hot glue gun on the sticky part just to be safe so that one day the sticker wouldn't peel off.

It needed just a little something extra so I added a plastic white glitter snowflake on top of a blue ribbon.

Here is a close up!

This is one of the first I made! I am pretty pleased :) There are MANY more to come so stay tuned (they're all different)! I'm going to try to hold off posting about them until we're further into November as much as I can but it's going to be hard because I'm so excited and I want to share!! But I've got a couple of other projects I'll be posting in the meantime.

This November, I've decided to dedicate my time (now that I've finished all my Christmas wreaths) to National Novel Writing Month, fondly known as NaNoWriMo. I've got my idea and I need to get started. Today is the first of the thirty days of November you have to write a 50,000 word novel. Hopefully it will be the kick in the bum I need to get back to writing! Wish me luck!!