My wreaths

First of all, I wish you all a very happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely time this Saturday. I also hope that you are sober by now!

Secondly- it is snowing on my blog! I hope you can see it! (If you can see the tiny little dots falling down from the header, then you're sober. If you always see tiny little dots falling down from the header, than you're never sober because I added this gadget yesterday! If you're reading this three years from now and think that it is still snowing, you have not been sober in years, my friend! Cheers!)

Ok, now, back to work! My first post in 2012.
In addition to my last post, I have two more wreaths to show you.
After seeing so many lovely hand-made yarn wreaths on the internet a fortnight ago, I got completely confused and was pretty sure that I would need at least a year to come up with a unique idea for my own wreath. But, as it turns out- I was wrong; making yarn wreaths is extremely addictive and, by the next evening, I had already made two. And I like them both. Now I need two New Years!

I took some pictures as I "wrapped" along. If you have no better things to do, stay here and look around.
And, please excuse the poor quality of some of the photos- the days are quite short and I did the majority of work later in the afternoon (I hated the idea of getting up at 7AM just to beg the Sun to assist me).

Here's how it went.

Although I originally intended to use styrofoam rings as the base, I eventually replaced them with simple straw wreaths; stryofoam is very fragile and I am awfully clumsy (read: I broke two wreaths at the very beginning).


MATERIALS AND TOOLS USED: 2 straw wreaths ( 20cm / 7in and 17.5cm / 8in in diameter), adhesive tape, leftover yarns (mainly 8ply) in 3 colours (pine green, deep red and white), some plied metallic yarn in golden colour, transparent glue, a crochet hook, scissors.
ADDITIONAL DECORATIONS: tiny cones (picked here and there), a few ornaments from my old wreath (something old), a few ornaments bought especially for my new wreaths (something new).

 

Since the wreaths I bought did not  come in plastic wrapping as they often do,  I first had to cover them with adhesive tape to get a smooth and even surface (Picture 1).

I decided to use the white yarns for my first, smaller, wreath. I found a tiny ball of a lovely, puffy yarn in snow white but I soon realised that I would not have enough to cover the whole wreath. But, there was just about enough yarn in the ball to give a lovely, snowy, final touch to the wreath. So; first I wrapped the wreath with another white yarn (just a stupid, ugly, 100% acrylic yarn), adding a few drops of glue as I worked along. The first layer created a solid, white base (Picture 2). Then, I sparsely wrapped the wreath with the second white yarn (I hope you can see the difference on the Picture 3).

Finally, the base was finished and it looked very puffy and fluffy. Just what I wanted!

The only thing left to do was to add the decorations.

When I started planning these projects, I promised myself that I would not spend money on shiny, glittery and sparkly ornaments no matter how appealing they are; I wanted my wreaths to be as hand-made as possible. Besides, I wanted to use some of the ornaments from the old wreath. But when I spotted the balls from the picture on the left, I just couldn't resist buying them. The special thing about this type of ornaments is that each ball is attached to a long piece of shiny wire on the back which makes attaching them to a wreath extremely easy. No glue required. I'll show you in a minute.

You simply untwist the wire, pick the ornaments you wan to use, and wrap the wire around the wreath (Picture 5). Then you twist the wire tails on the back to fasten the ornaments (Picture 6). That's it! Beautiful!

I also added a few decorations from the old wreath and and glued two tiny cones to the yarn. The result is shown in the Picture 7.

But I didn't like it. And, so I took some red yarn and turned my wreath into a sugar cane.

 I did pretty much the same thing with the second wreath.   

First the adhesive tape, then some glue and then the yarn. Pine green in this case.Once I finished applying the first layer of yarn, I added a spiral stripe of metallic yarn all around the wreath. Two layers actually!

Then I pimped it with some ornaments and the second wreath was done!

 

Sorry, is that yarn in your wreath?

Every year, three weeks before New Year's eve, my family, like many others,  hangs a nice, decorative wreath on the front door.
 When I was a kid, I invented a ritual - back then we lived on the 8th floor of a high building and, on the day when the wreaths are traditionally hanged for children to admire and for the neighbours to envy , I never used the lift. Instead, I would walk all the way up to the last floor carefully examining every wreath in the building. (OK, I admit, I would  also usually spit my chewing gum from the balcony on the last floor just to test the law of gravity!)
Then, a few days later, I would repeat the ritual and would usually notice that a few wreaths had been replaced in the mean time. Each time my friend and his mother who lived on the 3rd floor put a lovely, shiny ring on their door, their first neighbour would buy herself a new, shinier one! It was a real war!

I haven't abandoned my little ritual to this day and, although my family now lives on the 6th floor of a much smaller building,  the route to the top still turns into a decent gallery in December.
I finished my first inspection of the wreaths 2 days ago. :) This year 3 wreaths between the 3rd and the 5th floor are sea-themed; sea shells, sea stars and pebbles. That's new and original! (But, let's face it- it has to be a conspiracy! I suspect that there's a secret wreath-society downstairs that does not accept members from  the upper floors!  Bummer!)
Apart from the freemason's sea-themed wreaths, most others are pretty traditionally decorated; Christmas stars, bells, ribbons and ornaments, 1 Mickey Mouse and 2 Ninja turtles.
Some are made of fresh pine branches, others only have a few ugly plastic flowers on them. Some are new, some are old, and some are simply not up to this competition any more. I believe that one of them is actually ours. :) It is still lovely, the willow ring is still firm and glossy only the tiny decorations and fake Christmas stars are not in the best of all shapes any more. The wreath fell off more than once and some of the decorations had to be replaced, others are damaged and a few beg to be replaced (with Ninja turtles) as soon as possible.

So, I decided that our door needed a new wreath. A hand made one. Yesterday I went to a supermarket where they sell plain, styrofoam rings and bought one ring and a few styrofoam balls. Then I sat down in front of my computer and Googled! And Googled! And Googled! And I realised that there are THOUSANDS of amazing wreaths made with yarn, knit, crocheted and felted out there. I'm not sure I will actually have this wreath finished before 2012. - all the inspiration models are so lovely that I just can't make up mind. I think I will actually have  to take a year to think and decide which one to make. :)
So, before I can hang my own yarn wreath on my blog, I'll share some of the loveliest examples from the internet with you!
They are not all necessarily Christmas wreaths but that doesn't even matter! They're all gorgeous!

Yarn balls, felted flowers, garter ribbons, knitting needles, pom-poms, knit fabric, crocheted lace, argyle, stripes...you name it!

And, my personal favourite:

:)))) Obviously!

The following links will take you to a few lovely tutorials. In some of them you will find the instructions for making a few of the wreaths posted above.

• Yarn wreaths three ways (3 tutorials)
• Simple yarn wreath with a yellow floral decoration
• How to make a crocheted wreath
• White yarn Christmas wreath tutorial
• Vintage inspired knit wreath
• Stuffed seed-stitch wreath tutorial
• DYS Christmas- yarn wreath

Enjoy and happy crafting!