Along with making the new wreaths I shared in my last post, I have also been giving the wreaths that I have used for years much needed makeovers. Beyond that, I’ve actually gone into the attic and retrieved all of my florals and garlands to see what sort of refreshing I could do to them as well…man, I’ve got a lot of work to do!

For now, I’ll just focus on the wreaths.

The first wreath is one that has hung on my kitchen door. It can be seen from the kitchen, dining room and living room so I want it to be something that doesn’t make me cringe. Previously it had berries, pine cones and a burlap ribbon. At some point along the line, I added ornaments to it to match the decor of my kitchen, but a couple of years ago I changed the kitchen, and it no longer looked good in the space (To be honest, it was kind of ugly, but I was working with what I had.).

To start, I made some new pieces to add to the wreath. As we all know I’m sort of cheap, so I didn’t want to spend much on it. I decide to go with a rustic look, so I found some corrugated cardboard and cut out some shapes using my Christmas cookie cutters as stencils. I also cut out a snowman shape using a stencil that I created for another project (Post coming soon!). Once the shapes were cut out, I got one side of them damp with a sponge and the peeled the top layer off to expose the corrugated part of the cardboard. Next I painted them with silver paint and then aged them with brown stain. I placed a board on them while they dried to keep them from curling up on me. After they dried, I hot glued a wire to each one and attached them to the wreath. I am really happy with the look of these cut outs. They look like corrugated metal which is perfect for the rustic effect I was going for.

To make the snowman, I used some thin, adhesive backed cork that I attached to the cardboard cut out and I made his hat out of some buffalo plaid card stock (that is also glued to a cardboard base). Some silver cording for accents and he was ready for the wreath. The bow I made with some buffalo plaid ribbon I bought this fall and I secured it to the wreath using one of my “metal” ornaments.

Here is the final result. I added a few red berry picks, a bottle brush tree and few little cork trees that I picked up at Walmart on clearance last year.. I’m super  excited to see this in my kitchen once I have all the Christmas decorating done.

For my other wreath, I combined an old wreath and a metal star that I have used separately in the past.  Before, the wreath had large evergreen picks and some smaller berry picks swagged at the bottom of the wreath with a bow in the center. I removed everything and and cut the large evergreen stuff down into individual branches. Next, I painted the star white and antiqued it with a little diluted brown paint. Once it was dry, (Which took forever because I had to apply FIVE coats of white paint; the star started out red.) I secured it with wire to the center of the wreath. Once the star was in place, I laid out my design and then went around and hot glued each one in place.

I absolutely LOVE this wreath! It will be hanging in my living room next the to tree and I’m not sure I’m going to want to put it away when the holidays are over.

So that’s some of the stuff I’ve been working on this week. I have more non-wreath Christmas projects that I’m finishing up and I will be posting about them soon. I’m having so much fun working on all of these things and I hope you are all finding joy in what you do as well. Be blessed and remember:

Keep. It. Creative.