I have always loved the Christmas ball wreaths. For years, I have wanted one but the ones I want are so stinking expensive! I just knew that I could make one myself so I could never bring myself to spend the money on one.

I knew I could do it inexpensively because I already have amassed so many Christmas balls over the years that don’t go on my tree any longer but of course, I don’t just have any wreath forms casually laying around the house to make one. Those are cheap enough to buy though!

Alas…

It became one of those crafts that I wanted to do but I never intentionally went out and purchased a wreath form to do, so it never happened. Boo! Do you have any of those DIY craft projects laying around? I have plenty more but I won’t get into that now since that seems to be a pattern of mine.

Until…

I saw one of those cutesy little video tutorials that changed my life! Okay, I’m exaggerating.

BUT… it did show me that I could create a beautiful Christmas ball wreath using a wire coat hanger rather than a wreath form. Thanks to my mom’s dry-cleaning habits, I got a wire coat hanger for free! And yes, I said my Mom’s drycleaning habits. Just being real. I have no dry cleaning habits!

Anyway…

I made the decision to totally make this wreath for my front door this year.

This is my DIY Christmas Ball Wreath experience.

I’m not going to try to elongate this post into some really creative 20 step process that doesn’t really exist. It really is super simple to make. Well, in theory. Hang on and I’ll tell you all about it.

The Steps

1. Gather about 70 to 80 balls of various sizes. I used a mix of small, medium, and large.
2. Using a hot glue gun, glue the tops on the balls if they are loose. I glued all of mine. As you tighten the balls onto your hanger, it may cause enough pressure to push the ball off of the hanger. Take 30 minutes and save yourself a headache.
3. While your coat hanger ends are still together, try to bend it so that it makes as much of a circle as you can get it into.
4. Now it is time to disconnect the hanger at the top. You may need to use some pliers to help you.
5. Slide the Christmas ball ornaments on the hanger in the order of your choosing, rotating them and positioning them as close together as possible to hide the wire and fill in gaps. Continue this until your hanger is full. This part took me about 30 to 35 minutes.
6. Close your hanger and form your loop with the hanger part. Mine actually broke off so I just went with it and added a ribbon loop so I could hang it.
7. Make a big fluffy bow to cover your hanger and use some ribbon to weave into areas where your wire is showing too much for comfort.
8. Hang it!

That’s it! It really is that simple. However, there were a few hiccups along the way in my process so I want to take a minute to share them with you so you will know before you embark on this little crafty craft.

I have seen so many bloggers say they did this craft in 30 minutes. They are either super speedy or I am really slow because it took me almost 2 hours from start to finish. That’s okay. I can live with my turtle power. Ha!

My breakdown of time went like this. It took me about 30 minutes to hot glue every top hanger on the ornament. I was not going to do this initially because most everything I read said it was not necessary. And truthfully, it probably was not. However, the first time I created this wreath, I was about 3/4 done when one small jiggly push caused about 8 balls to pop off.

GASP! I may have sucked all the air out of the room at that point. Haha!

That was it for me on that day. I decided to quit and come back another day to start anew with freshly hot-glued tops.

I just used a simple little hot glue gun and paint tray that I picked up over the years.

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After I got the tops hot-glued on, there were no other issues sliding them onto the wire hanger until it was time to reconnect the two ends back together. I added as many ornaments as I could so that there would not be a huge gap at the top but I could not get it as full as I would have liked so there was a bit of a gap.

After I closed the hanger and reconnected the tips together, I literally hot-glued a few more ornaments on to fill in the gaping hole that I couldn’t deal with.

If you still have your hanger part on your coat hanger, just bend it to make a loop. Of course, mine broke off so I had to make a loop out of my ribbon. If you have to do this, make sure you make it large enough to reach your hook. I underestimated the size and had to do this twice. Remember, your wreath is not flat on the back. Haha!

At this point, I took a rather long length of ribbon and wrapped it around the wreath by weaving it through some of the bigger holes or gaps between my ornaments. You don’t have to add the ribbon, but I did because I loved that it covered some of the imperfections where I couldn’t get my ornaments as close as I would have liked them.

Lastly, I made a big fluffy bow by creating 6 loops out of my wire ribbon, stapling the center, and tieing it onto the top of the hanger with another piece. This formed the longer tails of my bow.

I hung mine on a Command Sticky hook like this one here at Target, which works great for the front door. It has weathered many years without ever falling off. Of course, they are made to be removed easily too in case you just want to put it up seasonally.

My honest thoughts on making the DIY Christmas Ball Coat Hanger Wreath…

I would have preferred to make it by hot-gluing all of the ornaments to a form and this is why. It is easier to control what balls go where. When you are stringing them on the wire coat hanger, the balls have to fit together in certain ways so it is more difficult to control what colors end up side by side. It is also difficult to know what size ball you need in certain places to cut down on gaps. The other thing is that when you are gluing them to a form, you can use the same size balls around the wreath so that it lays flatter and doesn’t look lopsided.

Unless you are looking closely at my wreath, you probably don’t notice these imperfections in mine. But… I do. That is okay though. I am working on accepting things in their imperfect state, and so I hung it on my front door with pride. I’m going to think about how beautiful it is every time I see it because that is the way God looks at us, as His creation, as we strive to be more like Him and follow His plan for our lives.

Maybe next year, I will do it over again on a wreath form, or maybe I won’t. For now, it does look very pretty on my front door.

If you are feeling stressed this holiday season, head over to check out my strategies for avoiding holiday stress this year!

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