Friday, August 31, 2012

My first ribbon wreath

I've seen ribbon wreaths being made everywhere and decided to try my hand at one for Christmas. I know it's early, but if I waited until October or November to do it, I wouldn't be able to find all the supplies I wanted (that is what happened last year)

Supplies:
Ribbon- lots!
Foam wreath- I used one that had a flat top.
Glue gun!
Time- including my mishaps it took me about 10 hours.

First off, I had problems figuring out how much ribbon I needed. I ended up with 130 feet of ribbon, and I cut them into 4.5" strips. I googled and found many, many tutorials and very few specify amount of ribbon needed, because it really all depends on the width of your ribbon, and how full you want your wreath.

I spent hours with the hot glue gun getting all the loops glued. Learn from my mistakes, when you glue a loop you need to leave a little bit of room at the end of the loop to fold out the ribbon, and glue it onto the wreath like this:

 

I only made sure of this with the first half of the loops. Then I got lazy, and thought it wouldn't REALLY matter. It does. It is almost impossible to get it hot glued onto the wreath and look "uniform". If you have to glue from one side or the other you end up with loops that aren't as tall as the rest, or it is pushing down the other loops on the wreath. I had to go and pull apart all my loops and reglue. Not fun.
 
Now, I haven't decided what I really want to do with the rest of my wreath. That 130 feet of ribbon is all there..on the top side of my wreath. I prewrapped my wreath with a dark green polkadot ribbon, so the inside, top and back are all covered. If I would have used wider ribbon I'm sure this wouldn't have been a problem. I wanted to get some of the same ribbons and do the outside of the ring, but it will cost me a small fortune, again :)
 
I've seen a few of these done with pins, rather than hot glue, but I prefer to burn my fingertips off, not poke them :)
 
*Another tip, when you get to the end of your ribbon reel, it's attached to the cardboard spool by tape. SAVE IT. stick the tape onto a piece of cardboard in case you need to get more later, and you don't have to haul the whole wreath to the store.
 
I have a few months to go to decide what to add to it, this wreath is for above my fireplace. If I make any changes to it, I'll let you know.