How To Make a Christmas Wreath Ornament

If you follow my blog, you know that on weekdays I work in retail display. I am the visual manager at a Bonton. It is a chain of department stores on the east coast.  If you live in the Midwest it would be Bergner’s, Boston Store, Carson Pirie Scott, Elder- Beerman, Herberger’s, orYounkers.  All these stores are part of the same corporation and carry the same merchandise and follow the same visual directives.   I am responsible for how my store looks.  It entails a whole lot more than dressing mannequins (although that really is the fun part).

In the retail world the “4th quarter” of the year is when stores make most of their profit as it is when  the major buying season begins for the holidays.  You can be certain every retailer is going be ready. They want you to spend your hard earned dollars in their store and are going to entice you to shop in many ways.  One way is to make the store all festive with holiday decor and that is where I,” the visual” (that is how we are referred to) comes in.   Today’s date is:  October 5, 2010. Halloween is 3 weeks away – Thanksgiving 6 weeks.   This is what I have been doing at work since last week-

Decorating Christmas Trees – lots of them

You can imagine how many comments I hear from customers – It’s so early… It’s not even Halloween… Can’t we enjoy fall first…  I have heard it all, but still have to decorate for the holidays in September and October.  At home I am all about pumpkins and the color of fall leaves in my home.  At work I still have 27 more trees to light and decorate.  About 18 wreaths to light and put bows on. Then haul them all to the floor and get them up on ledges and high places.  If you come into the store, I will be the one hanging from the ceiling like a monkey putting up garlands and doing scary electrical things. I will be piling boxes with pretty ribbon bows on every flat surface, banners down the center of the store all in red, white, and green.    I have until November 6 to get it all done – all by myself.  My fingers will be raw after taking last year’s lights off all the trees and putting new lights back on.

Years ago when I worked at Macy’s in San Francisco we got the holiday trim ready as a team of about twenty.  It took us two weeks to strip the trees, string new lights, and decorate them.   Once that was complete we would spend one evening after the store was closed to create a holiday wonderland in the store overnight.  It is not like that anymore – all the work is the same, but I do it by myself.  It is a lonely job, I will be tucked away back in the receiving area of the store.   To make the time go quicker and get in the mood, I plug in my Ipod and listen to holiday tunes to get me in the spirit of  decorating.

I also have been making lots of…

And as you can imagine a lot of ornaments have passed through my hands the past week and when I saw this little gold wreath my DIY brain went into  “Oh, that would be so easy to make” mode.  So I did when I got home from work today.

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How to Make a Christmas Wreath Ornament

I snipped three sections of greenery from a garland and twisted the ends together to make a circle. I sprayed the greenery with gold spray paint. I love Rust-Oleum’s Metallic line. It produces a very bright gold finish on any surface.

I sprayed the greenery very heavily with paint until it was totally covered and then sprinkled gold glitter over the entire thing.  I  left it alone to dry and made dinner.  Once dry I hot-glued gold beads to resemble ornaments and then tied a ribbon onto it to hang.  Presto-Change-O – an ornament for my tree, a small decorative wreath to hang from a cabinet or doorknob, or an embellishment for a present depending on the size you make.

After

I had all the supplies so it was practically free.

I will be working hard the next few weeks so you may not see as many posts from me until I get all the holiday trim up in my store.

In the visual world the bows I made for the trees are referred to as the “Macy Bow”.  They can be made any size you desire with short or long tails.  Really full and tight or loose and loopy.  For a step by step tutorial on how to make one go to Save-On-Crafts and scroll  to you get to “The Basic Bow”.

If you have completed any holiday projects, don’t forget to link them at my On Going Holiday Link- Up  that will run until Christmas.

When do you like to see Holiday decorations go up in the stores you shop at?  After Halloween or Thanksgiving?  Or do you love to see it now so it gets you in the spirit of the season early?  I am used to seeing stores decorated early, but have a hard time when the radio station I listen to starts playing holiday songs 24/7  in mid October!

For more tips from my visual design retail days, click this link —> Holiday Retail Prop Sales; Making Ribbon Bows the Easy Way.