Upcycled Christmas Wreath

I have had this upcycled Christmas wreath project in my imagination since last January. It all started when I found this wooden cut out Merry Christmas sign at a thrift store. It was absolutely perfect. By “sign” I mean a bag of wooden Christmas shapes, at .25 cents each.

Sold.

At the same time I had all these old work socks laying around that had tops in perfectly good condition, but just with older soles.

These are not them. These are a picture of some new ones I bought for this year just in case you’re out there asking what the hell a work sock is.

I love work socks. I don’t know what it is about them that I adore but to me they scream Canadian Winter, and endless decor and craft projects. Last year I used them to make some Valentine’s Cards.

But onto the wreath. Because I have tons of embroidery hoops that I have picked at various thrift stores I am always brainstorming ideas on what to do with them. So when this all came together in my mind, all I thought was “Damnit Christmas just passed”.

So I have literally waited a year to get this one done. Which looking back, seems silly, but at the time I was so Christmas decor’ed out.

How to make the Upcycled Christmas Wreath.

It went like this.

I got two embroidery hoops:

• one 12″
• one 8″ one

I traced both of them onto a craft foam core board to create a wreath form. Then I used my X-Acto knife to cut out the wreath form.

This is a very inexpensive way to get a good wreath form template by the way.

I then fitted the foam core wreath template into my embroidery hoops as depicted in the photo below.

If you do this please make sure the hoops pass with ease over the form. If they are stuck, trim the edges of the foam core and leave a small gap of space.

Why? Because you will be covering this form, so you need to be able to slide your hoops into and around the foam core base after you are done WITH the fabric around the foam template. If you make it too big, they won’t fit.

And you will cry.

Next, I got my work socks and trimmed them to fit around the wreath form. I used my glue gun to glue them to the form.

I’ve started doing tons of projects on my floor upstairs in our future home office. I am sure my husband is going to catch onto me using the glue gun on the carpet.

Maybe that will entice him to get rid of the carpet up there. It’s all part of my evil plan.

I added some felt.

And wrapped some yarn.

I placed each embroidery hoop in their respective spots around the wreath template. It was a tight squeeze – which is why I recommended some leeway between the foam core template and the embroidery hoops.

After I used E6000 glue to glue a small wooden house and the Merry Christmas sign to the inner sides of the embroidery hoop. I pushed the two as tightly possible next to each other to fit securely.

And finally the wreath that had been hanging out in my imagination for a year came to life.

I affectionately call it my Winter Canadiana Christmas Wreath because for some reason I can envision it being hung in a modern log cabin, that I totally cannot afford. You know the ones that people have as their weekend homes.

I want a weekend home. Is there really such a thing as a weekend home? Oh right. “The Cottage”.

Forget that, I like the term Weekend Cabin. Don’t believe me, Google the term and try not to imagine your weekends in one.

One day, one day…

In the meantime, I make cost effective crafts. Which to be honest even if I won the lottery, I’d still probably do.

How cost effective was this wreath for me to make?

• 2 embroidery hoops (thrift store) $1
• Used socks (free – sort of given that they were going to be thrown out).
• E6000 glue (pre-owned – a new tube would be around $5)
• Grey and Red Felt $ 2
• Yarn $3
• Wooden signs (thrift store) .50 cents

For a Grand Total of approximately $6.50. Maybe $7 with taxes in.

Merry Christmas!