Often times, on December 25th, you will find me in my sweatpants and ponytail scrounging through the Christmas clearance at Target, Walmart and the like. Why do I do this? Because I am cheap. Really, that is the only reason. A younger version of myself got some sort of thrill out of digging through clearance racks and bins. Not so much anymore, but I do love finding a good deal! And that is worth going out with the crazies to dig through the racks and bins and screaming children who would rather play with their new toys.
So one year during my clearance shopping I bought this cute little jingle bell snowflake for 70% off.
I'm not sure why, but I really liked it.
However, I knew when I bought it that it was incomplete. The scale is just, weird.
It's too big to be an ornament or hang from a door, but it is definitely too small to be by itself. Plus I felt like it needed some dimension. I decided I would jazz it up to make it a final piece, so I jumped onto trusty Pinterest to see what I could find by searching "winter wreath". To save you time, let me just tell you what 99% of "winter wreaths" search results consist of:
- snowflakes
- snowmen
- twigs
- berries
- pearls
- pine cones
Now, I am not "hating" on these wreaths, some are in fact quite beautiful. But the lack of variety is quite uninspiring. And yes, I do realize that twigs, pine cones, snowflakes and snowmen are all relevant to winter. But still...
Side note: before you accuse me of being a hypocrite for also having a snowflake in my wreath, keep in mind I purchased it like three years ago...
Related side story: Every year my office helps organize a charity event about two weeks before Christmas. We auction wreaths, menorahs, and ornaments that are original creations. Being that my profession has many creative people, we get some unique submissions. A group of girls and I usually make a wreath to donate and this is my favorite one we have made:
It was super hard for us to give it away because we all loved it so much. So I got to thinking, why not recreate this for my winter wreath? My winter decor does not have a lot of twigs, snowflakes, berries in it, so adding any of those things wouldn't make a lot of sense, and this would be easy on time and budget!
So I bought a plain wall frame and some ribbon from the craft store. I spray painted the frame silver.
I took some of my ribbon and looped it around and through so that it would act as the hanger. I tied a simple knot at the top.
Then I needed to make a bow. I have experimented with bows before, but in general I don't have a natural knack for these things. So onto youtube I went, and I found this amazing and easy tutorial.
I made my bow much smaller than she did, but the tutorial worked just the same. After my bow was complete I took a dab of hot glue to attach it to the frame.
Then I used more hot glue to attach the snowflake to the frame and BOOM, I was done! Probably the fastest wreath I've made (once I figured out how to make a bow!)
I love the way it turned out! It is simple but pretty and definitely coordinates with the rest of my winter decor.
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