I found this great wreath last year on etsy and I thought I would try making my own this year.
Supplies:
Wreath – I used a 12″ foam wreath
Yarn – I used Red Heart Super Saver in white
Felt – Red and Green. I had some yardage of the red, but you could get sheets. One would probably work, but I would say two to be sure.
Chipboard
Paint – I used metallic silver and gold
Glitter – I used Martha Stewart white gold
Sealer – I used Krylon Low Odor Clear Finish in gloss.
Bells
Beads
String – Optional
Mod Podge
Hot Glue
Plant Stakes – You could also use toothpicks
Tools:
Paint brush
Hot glue gun
Scissors
First I googled reindeer clipart to find a deer that I liked. I wanted one similar to the one on the etsy wreath so I decided on this one.
I took it over to paint (I am a paint master. Photoshop, not so much.) and made some edits. I took off the holly and bells and flipped the image so that it was facing the other direction. Then I printed it out as big as possible. It’s about 10″ tall and 8″ wide. I traced it to some chipboard and got cutting. I made sure that the bottom of my antlers were attached to the back of my deer, so that it was a little more stable.
Next I mixed my metallic silver paint with my metallic gold paint, equal parts of each. It gave me a really pretty white gold color. Then I painted the chipboard deer. The metallic paint has a really pretty sheen to it, and I don’t think that it really needed the glitter.
However, I am a glitter junky. My rule of thumb is the more bling the better. Maybe that’s the blonde. I just like sparkly things. So after it had dried for a few minutes I slapped a generous coat of mod podge on there and sprinkled it with white gold glitter.
Make sure that you have a really good coat of mod podge on there so that you don’t end up with some drier spots where less glitter will stick. Otherwise you might end up with some funny looking swirls like I did. Saturating the chipboard with the paint and mod podge will make it start to curl up, but once it dries it will flatten itself back out, so don’t panic if it looks all bent out of shape. Then I put a quick coat of sealer on it and set it aside to dry completely. This sealer says you can spray it in doors, which I did. It does have a smell, but it’s not too bad and it dissipates quickly. I highly recommend sealer when you are using glitter. You get the pretty look of glitter without the mess of glitter getting EVERYWHERE. Oooo sparkly…
Next I turned my focus to the wreath. I took the end of the yarn and tied it in a knot around the wreath. I held the knot in place on the back of the wreath and started wrapping the yarn around the wreath. Make sure that you are wrapping it snug, but not so tight that it’s strangling the wreath. I wrapped it all the way around and tied the end in a knot with the yarn at the beginning.
This took me about 30 minutes to wrap, so my deer was now nice and mostly dry so it was flat again. Best of all, since I sealed it I remained glitter free, even after handling. I laid it on top of the wreath to see the points where it touched the wreath. This is where you’re going to attach it with planter stakes. I got these at Michael’s on the same aisle as the wreaths. They look like big green toothpicks and have green wire on them. They wire was just wrapped around one end, so I was able to easily remove it. You want to make sure that you stick them into the wreath right where the deer touches. If you put the stakes too low into the center of the wreath, your deer will bend when you try to glue the chipboard to the stakes. I started with the nose. I put the stake in the wreath, squirted a little hot glue on there, and pressed the nose on firmly. I repeated this process with each of the legs. After a few minutes of drying I flipped it over and put some more hot glue around the plant stakes to make sure that it was glued on there really well.
Finally, I strung 3 bells (I used silver ones) onto some bakers twine and tied it around the deer’s neck. I put a little dab of hot glue on the back of the deer to hold the knot in place so that it stayed out of sight. Now the deer was done, it was time to move on to flowers.
I opted for two large poinsettias, so I cut out the pieces I needed for two. Here’s the template I created for them. If you want smaller flowers you can cut the petals a bit smaller. I took five petals and laid them in a circle so that they were all touching each other, forming a star shape. Then I put some hot glue around the middle and laid the center piece on top of it.
While that dried, I took the other five petals, one at a time, and put a line of hot glue across the base of the petal and folded it in half. Be sure to hold it for a couple seconds so that it sticks together. Once they were all glued and folded, I flipped my star of petals over and glued the folded petals in between the flat petals. Lastly I put the center circle on top with a generous amount of hot glue.
Next came the beading. I tried to be fancy and do a big gold bead in the center of a ring of little gold beads. That was a pain. I suggest that unless you have tweezers or something to help you line it up nicely, you may just want to do three big beads.
Lastly, I cut out my leaves and hot glued the flowers and leaves onto the wreath. I think that it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.
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