Merry Christmas Wreath

 I really like wreaths that combine textures such as the smoothness of christmas ornaments with the roughness of dried grapevine.  So when I made this pretty gaudy christmas wreath, I knew I wanted to put it on a grapevine wreath to tone it down a bit. Plus it’s a great excuse to show you how to use decomesh on a grapevine wreath.  I did not do a full tutorial on this wreath because honestly I just sat down with my glue gun and went to town. I glued on so many christmas ornaments that at one point I seriously thought, “ok.. put down the shiny balls and step away”.   Attaching decomesh to a grapevine wreath is very easy. You use this tutorial on How to Make a Decomesh Wreath and do the same thing except you tie the pipe cleaners directly onto the pieces of grapevine.   If you look closely you can see the silver pipe cleaners that I slid under one of the loose grapevines and then simply twisted it shut with the decomesh inside of it to hold the decomesh onto the wreath.  I would suggest another color pipe cleaner that either matches your mesh or the wreath but I was just using what I had on hand.  Even though I didn’t do a full tutorial on this wreath, I do want to show you how I started it.   To make this wreath, I started on the left side of the wreath and bunched my decomesh close together for a really full coverage. In the middle where I knew I wanted to place the christmas ornaments I just made loose zig zags of decomesh so I could fit the christmas balls into that space easily but still have some decomesh show through. Then I finished it on the right side with another full bunch of decomesh, all tied to the wreath form using pipe cleaners (also known as chenille stems).  When I was done with that I just went crazy gluing on christmas ornaments until my heart was happy. If you follow me on Facebook you’ll see that I scored a great deal on christmas ornaments at Home Depot on Black Friday.  I didn’t count the ornaments but I think I used about 40 ornaments all together.  However because I got the ornaments on sale for $5, the decomesh ribbon for $6 and the wreath form half off at Jo-Ann’s for $4, I made this wreath for under $20.  It really does pay to learn how to make your own wreaths. One of my goals for this year is to make an Ebook with wreath making tips and tricks.  Give it a try and let me know how it turns out.