The Inspired Wreath

I have been known to get myself into a pile of trouble thinking something is a lot easier than it is in reality.  Since closing my business and having time to think (which is a very dangerous thing) I have uttered the words "how hard can it be" several times.  I think it frightens DH when I say "honey, I have an idea".  But it's not always bad!

Take a recent adventure for example. 
In late November, I was off to Shoppers Drug Mart to do some  shopping.  They had decorated for the holidays and had hung these giant wreaths made of Christmas tree ornaments.  They were beautiful.  I admired them for a short while, and thought... really-how hard could it be to make those myself?  So off I went to Walmart (which I really dislike by the way, but that's another story).  That day I was shopping with a friend.  We go into the Christmas decorations department and right away I find a great collection of purple and gold ornaments all packaged up together.  $7.97! Perfect.  Then I find some bigger gold ornaments for $4.97 for 4.  Perfect... or are they? Around the eisles over here over there.  Why can't they just put all the ornaments in one place? 

Then it needed ribbon.  I knew instinctively it needed to be a gold ribbon but who knew there are as many different kinds of gold ribbon as I've had hair colours!  So after asking Liz at least 100 times "what do you think?" and changing my mind as often as I asked, I settled on the ornaments and ribbon.  Then off to Michaels for the wreath frame and all that was left was to put it all together.  Easy Peasy.

Ok... so I settled on a wire wreath frame thinking I could wire the round ornaments to the sort of flat/sort of round frame. Wrong.  Ok, what if I take a wire coat hanger and string all the ornaments through their hook holder thingys? Fail.  In fact, that was an epic fail.  It was more like a topiary ball than a wreath.  So as Winnie the Pooh says.... Think think think.

Long story short, I eventually got out the glue gun and glued the ornaments to each other and the frame.  302 glue burns later I had this mess of ornament balls that I was sick of looking at.  But I had come this far, I had to see it through to the end.  The wreath had gobs of glue in some places and looked home-made in that horrible tacky way.  It was late in the evening and I was so tired of looking at a project that was proving to be a lot harder than I thought.

The next morning I got up, took my daughter to school and came back to face the monster wreath.  Maybe the Elves came and fixed it for me over night.... but no.  There it was in all its ugly glory!  UGH.  I started playing with the ribbon and made a big bow which covered one flawed part.  I decided to try to thread the ribbon through the gaps in the ornaments, but that wouldn't work (the gaps weren't big enough for the wide wired ribbon I was using) but you could see through the gaps to the wire frame.  From a distance it was ok, but close up (like when you knock on my door) it looked awful.  I took the ribbon and glued it loosely to the back of the wreath and I doubled it up in places that were really gappy.  There was one spot that had a lot of glue showing so I took a small piece of ribbon and folded it as if I had been able to wind it through the frame and EUREKA! It was starting to come together.  I folded a few more small pieces of ribbon and tucked them in the spots that needed covering and where it naturally belonged and then I fell in love! 

It was a little harder than I thought but totally worth it!