christmas wreath

I have been a week making this wreath...not because of the work, it was just having the spirt to do it. When I considered making my own christmas wreath I envisioned a ring of red and dark green flowers,all traditional christmas colours, but when I started to lay it out I didnt like it , to me it seemed too harsh, so I removed the dark green flowers and made some in different shades of a lighter green, and added some pink flowers to soften down the look.

To make the wreath firstly I bought a polystyrene ring, this one was 12"

It was only £2.00 in my local craft shop and so I bought a few in different sizes and I also bought some cone shaped ones that I shall enjoy playing with to make christmas table decorations with...

Then I cut out loads of scalloped circles in various co ordinating colours and made into flowers. Here is a tutorial showing you how to do this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3DZSEfEYPA

These flowers are so easy to make and the best thing is that you can cut the circles on your cameo and so it takes minutes to have 5 or 6 made!!

As you can see in the picture I dont make mine perfect they are usually a little hodge podge mix, but thats how I like it because a garden is never uniform and nature isnt perfected either!!

I then decide which leaves I want to use because sometimes the colours used in the flowers change the way you want to lay out your wreath....so my leaves always come last to cut but first to go down...

Here is a selection of leaves that  I most frequently use in my wreaths and they all come from the silhouette store. I tend to make 2 or 3 different types for each wreath in a variety of colours.

Then comes the fun time...I tend to use my glue gun to stick the leaves and flowers to the polystyrene as that way they are nice and secure and will withstand the tugging and playing with that they are subjected to by my family!!

The reindeer in this one was some cuts I had left from christmas cards I made!!

They just added interest and filled over some gaps left when the flowers were placed. I could have added more but the 2 I placed seemed to be enough....

The Father chrismas and Mother Christmas were my husbands find...he went to a tabletop sasle and a lady there had a carrier bag of craaft bits that she sold to him for £2 and right at the bottom there they were. The minute I saw them I knew they were destined for this years wreath!!

Thank you for looking
Love debby xx