Christmas Ornament Wreath

I made my favorite Christmas wreath ever this week.

Ever.

I really thought this wreath was going to be hard to make, and although I messed up on it about a million times, it still took me less than an hour and cost me only $7!

Seven dollars. 

Can I get a whut-whut?!

If you follow me on Facebook, you know why I'm so excited about a wreath covered in shiny things. 

I went to Nashville this past weekend for an Ugly Christmas Sweater party (seen here) to celebrate my sweet cousin's graduation from law school. While I was there, I saw this little nugget of awesome hanging on her front door.

It was so pretty that it never even occurred to me that she had made it, until later when I got home and saw a post about it on her Instagram (P.S. I'm on Instagram now at livelovediy. I share lots of personal fun stuff there, so c'mon over!. It only took me 80 years to join, but I'm making up for lost time. I'm obsessed!). I've seen these ornament wreaths all over the place in stores ( for $100+!!!), so I figured she bought it. (I realize Whitney survived law school, so it probably should have occured to me that she can wield a glue gun. Whattayagonnado.) Once I knew she made it, my wheels began churning in jet-speed, and within 10 hours of arriving back home, I secured 100+ ornaments and an elephant-sized pack of hot glue. 

I mean, c'mon. I had to find out if this wreath-magic was hereditary.

I wish I could report that yes, indeed, our blood line is strong, and we are gifted wreath-ers.

However, if I'm being honest, these things are so darn easy to make that I can't just credit our gene pool. I think my cat could successfully make one of these. 

She does love to bat around ornaments all. day. long. so that seems like a natural fit.

The anybody-can-do-it-factor of this project was further confirmed when I had several readers send me their own version of an ornament wreath. (See all of the 'reader wreaths' here.) Let me just say, ya'll are a TALENTED bunch! I loved seeing all of the different versions, and even posted a few on my blog Facebook page. (Anybody else wanna step forward? I love seeing what you make!) 

Anyways, after posting pictures of my cousin's colorful version, I had tons of people asking me how to do it. Since I had absolutely no idea, I set upon my own little wreath journey.

So, before I show you how easy-peasy it was to make, I'll show you a few more pictures of how it turned out.  At first, I hung the ornament wreath on the front door, but after the first day I grew kinda tired of waiting for it be destroyed every time someone stampeded through our front door. 

Glass ornaments + men + doors = anxiety.

 So, instead, I hung it over my favorite mirror in the master bedroom.

I haven't put any Christmas decorations in this part of the house yet anyways, so the ornament wreath adds the perfect little touch of Christmas.

Plus, it puts a smile on my face every time I walk into the bedroom and see its little glittery face.

What do you think? Do you like it over the mirror?

Okay, now time for the 'How To'.

Seriously, this entire project took me less than an hour. I sat down on the floor in the living room one evening, poured myself a glass of wine, plugged in the hotglue gun, and turned on the Christmas music.

Warning: I did this project at night. The next few photos probably won't win me any photog-of-the-year awards. I hope you'll bear with me anyways. 

I love that I said 'probably'...as if the possibility of that award is ever-looming. 

To make your own ornament wreath, here's what you need:

Supplies:

ornaments 

wreath (or circle of some sort. Hula-hoop-optional.)

hot glue

glue gun

That's it! 

Here's the kicker, though. You're going to need a boatload of ornaments. I used 100+ on my wreath. 

To keep from emptying my bank account, I went to the Dollar Tree and got 6 tubes of ornaments (which gave me about 75 ornaments in varying colors) and 1 small wooden wreath.

Total = $7.

I also had about 30 ornaments left over from decorating my thrift store Christmas tree, so I used those, too.

The trick is to decide on your color scheme (I chose metallics.) and then get 4-5 different sizes/colors of ornaments within that color scheme. Make sure you have big, medium, and small ornaments.

Before you begin hot-glueing like a crazy lady, you'll need to remove all of the metal tops off of the ornaments. 

Just for fun, and to give you an idea of how many ornaments I used, here's the pile of ornament-tops about half-way through the plucking process.

Once you have all of your ornaments topless (teehee), start by glue-ing ornaments around the inside of the wreath, facing up.

Then do the same thing on the outer edge of the wreath, still with the ornaments facing up.

Let the glue dry for a minute, then flip it over. It should look something like this.

Now, it's time to cover the wreath in ornaments. Just start glueing. I literally messed up and made it look weird about 10 times. Just peel the ornament back off, scrape off the glue, and try again.

Start with the big ornaments first, then glue the medium ornaments on, then fill in all the gaps with the small ornaments. 

You'll still have a few gaps when all is said and done, but you won't notice when it's hung. 

I also debated on whether I wanted the glittery ornaments. In the end, I actually added extra. And then went even farther and added little disco balls, too.

I also decided that I didn't like the white ornaments on it. So, rather than take them off, I just used silver Rub n Buff on them. I love the way it turned out.

The beauty of this project is that you can make this wreath however you want.

You could make even make one in a single color if you wanted!

After all of the ornaments were glued on, I attached a simple metal wreath hanger and tied a big bow at the top.

I truly LOVE the way my little ornament wreath turned out!

So, what do you think? Do you like it?

Also, that's not all I've been up to this holiday season! If you're new here or just missed a post, make sure to check out my $40 thrift store tree here.

I decorated the entire thing with a bunch of handmade ornaments! You can see how I did it here.

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Ya'll truly make it so much fun for me to share all my little creations!

Thank you!

Pssssssst. Want more?

 Check out our house tour here!

or

check out some of our fave posts here!

or here!

Subscribe to LiveLoveDIY via email
Enter your email address: