Wednesday 12 December 2012

Holiday Crafting


Several years ago (2003), I got the idea to make an ornament wreath.  It was a beautiful disaster.  Like most of the blogs now recommend, I used hot glue, glass ornaments, and a foam form.  BIG MISTAKE.  Hot glue is good for exactly nothing at all.  I hate it.  All it does is get long stringy hot glue boogers all over the place without actually  doing a decent job of sticking Thing A to Thing B.  Here is a photo of it, while it lasted:


Every time I went outside I had to sweep up fallen ornaments.  After a week it looked like it had mange.  I was quite disappointed.

Having learned from my mistakes, and having a place big enough for plenty of decoration, I thought I would try again.  I was thinking of using a wire hanger as a basis, an idea that was confirmed by this site.  Then I went to Europris, which is a discount retailer that resembles a sort of cross between Dollar General and what KMart was like back when I was growing up: a good place to get stuff on a budget but not somewhere you want to get anything really important.  A good deal of their business is seasonal stuff which they sell really cheaply, even by Norwegian standards. So I loaded up on plastic ornaments, which only look plastic if you take a really close look at them.  From a distance they can be mistaken for glass, but if they pop off of the wreath, there is no mess, just a plasticky bounce and a splat of glitter.


About an hour later, I had this.  I filled in the gaps by using the red tinsel garland, rather than by gluing on any more ornaments; I didn't want to use glue at all, and I managed to avoid it.  I had about a half a tube of ornaments leftover plus most of the ornaments in the box to the left in the photo.  Those will be used for other projects; we might hang some from our trees or bushes, or from the patio railings.  Or stash them for further crafting.  


The other cool thing about this wreath is that, apart from the bow, it's reversible.  So the side that is against the wall (yes, that is a wall, not the floor; I live in a lumberyard) could easily have been the front.  So if you have a place to hang a free-hanging wreath, such as from a patio, this would work since both sides are the "right side"; you would just need to add a bow to both sides.

Henrik saw it for the first time this morning.  He pointed at it and said "Apples!"  So now it's the shiny apple wreath.  

2 comments:

  1. It's lovely! And hot glue is completely useless. I hate the stuff.

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  2. Thanks! Hot glue is so worthless. I don't understand why so many people still use it.

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