Make Your Own White Winter Wreath

Hi, it's Mandi again, from Making Nice in the Midwest, here to share with you an easy winter wreath DIY. I love decorating our home at Christmastime with simple homemade elements, but it's a little sad at the new year when all of the festive decor is taken down. This delicate winter wreath is great for Christmastime, but really, you can leave it up all Winter long!Some of the supplies for this wreath are a little unexpected. I wanted a delicate frame, so I used an old coat hanger, and for the modern ode-to-snowballs element, I used ping pong balls! My husband, Phil, said he thought I was gearing up for a drinking game until I started drilling holes in the ping pong balls.

Materials and Tools Needed:

• power drill or awl tool (the awl tool might be tricky/dangerous)
• metal pliers
• white florist wire
• white florist tape
• coat hanger (the flimsier the better)
• artificial baby's breath or similar whispy flower
• white ping pong balls (I used 17)
• 2/3 yard of wide ribbon
• scissors
• optional: hot glue gun

Step One: Using the metal pliers, pull apart the twisted neck of the wire hanger. Use the pliers to bend out any kinks in the wire and to shape it into a circle. You don't have to worry about getting out all of the kinks around the neck of the hanger, because they are helpful in twisting together the ends again after you've made the circle. The reattachment point doesn't need to be perfect—just cover it with the bulkiest portion of flowers during the next step.

Step Two: Cut the stems off the baby's breath and portion each bunch into smaller segments. I kept four larger groupings (three for the right side, one for the left), and trimmed the rest into small pieces. Starting at the top of the wreath, tape the pieces of baby's breath onto the wire frame. If your wire frame isn't white, you should wrap the wire with the white florist tape before adding the flowers. Florist tape only sticks to itself and it sticks the best when you pull on it as you wrap.

If you're concerned about the placement of the flower pieces, it may be helpful to lay them out before beginning, and maybe snap a quick picture to remember where the general placement should be. To keep your wreath asymmetrical like mine, build out the right side more than the left side of the wreath.  Step 3: After you've built the base of your wreath with the baby's breath taped to the wire frame, it's time to add the white balls. I was worried about the logos on the ping pong balls showing when I wired them to the wreath, but I found that if I drilled each of my two holes on either end of the logo, the wording stayed facing the back of the wreath. If you are hanging your wreath in a window or somewhere where it will be seen from behind, you might want to prep the ping pong balls by placing them in an empty egg carton, logo-side up, and spraying them with a coat of matte white spray paint.

After you've drilled or punched two holes in each ping pong ball, make a hook with the end of a 9" piece of wire and thread the wire through a ping pong ball. Attach the ball to the wire frame of the wreath, wrapping the excess wire a few times around, and then trimming the remaining portion with the metal pliers. To build a grouping of ping pong balls on your wreath, you may need to drill extra holes on the sides of the balls to thread wire through in order to connect the balls together.Step Three: As I worked on attaching more balls to the wreath, I realized hot glue could be an affective joining method for the outtermost layer of ping pong balls. A little bit of glue also kept them from wiggling around and getting out of place. After I had all of them in place, I cut out a 24" piece of wide ribbon and cut angles into each end. I folded the ribbon at the top to help it lay nicely on the thin wire, and then added a couple of dots of hot glue to top inside portion of the ribbon to make sure it stayed in place.Because of the delicate appearance of the wreath, I didn't want to use a heavy looking wreath hanger, so I found a transparent sticky hook that worked perfectly! Now I have beautiful white winter wreath and a conversation starter right at my front door. "You made that out of ping pong balls?"

–Mandi Johnson

Credits // Author and Photography: Mandi Johnson