Sew Merry: Yarn Wreath

Well, I’m breaking tradition here and I’m not going to do Photo 365 today. Instead, I’m going to share more Christmas projects with you. After Christmas, I will play catch up and share all of the Photo 365 pictures at once :) Besides, some of my daily photos are of me making stuff. And that would give away the surprise! So instead, here’s another installment of Sew Merry.

I’m sure you have all seen these yarn wreaths by now, haven’t you? Well, for those of you who haven’t, you can now see mine! The first time I saw one was at Starbucks a few years ago for their holiday decor. I thought it was so cute and it fit really well with my decor this year so I incorporated a couple of them in at church.

It’s a pretty simple, mindless project although I must admit, it takes some time. I think it took me about 5 hours to complete one. Here is how the project went down:

First, I made a wreath form using foam core board. You could also use cardboard. Much like last year, I used the lids from two pots to get the circle shape and just traced around them and cut them out with a knife. Next, I wrapped the form with yarn so I would have a nice background. To me, this is the most tedious part :) A little disclaimer, I was making this at night so all of these photos are dark. Sorry about that :)

Next, I wrapped styrofoam balls in yarn and also a few in twine and taped the ends down (for now). I used 3 sizes and I think total there were 48 styrofoam balls. I just bought mine from the dollar store, that is where I found them the cheapest. They came in packages of 8 so it only cost me $6. It takes some time to do this but I just did it while watching a movie. Once I had them all wrapped, I grouped them by color so I could see better what I was working with.

Next, I fired up my hot glue gun. I took the tape off that was securing the ends of the yarn ball and glued it down. Then I stuck that down on the wreath form so the glued end was down and you couldn’t see it. Next, I added another ball, and another and so on until the whole wreath was covered. I also would squirt some glue down in between where two of them were touching for added support. Needless to say, be careful when doing this. The glue is really hot and I got a nasty burn blister on one of my fingers :) No fun!

What do you think? They add a little something :)

I also think it would be fun to incorporate ornaments as well. Or some bells. Jingle all the way!

Want to see more Christmas projects? See all of Sew Merry here.