My Steampunk Christmas Wreath!

I hope you aren't tired of my Christmas decorations yet, because I still have one or two surprises left! I'd hoped to show you my entire dining room today, but yesterday was pretty emotionally exhausting (if you read CW and/or the news then you know what I mean), so I'm afraid I didn't take the wide-angle shots last night like I planned. Instead I planted flowers by our front door and held onto John and tried to remind myself what real life feels like.

Fingers crossed I'll have pics ready by tonight, though - and also that my new flowers last more than a week, because I got real ones and I am reeeeally bad at gardening. Heh. (It's still 80 degrees here, btw, which is why I can plant flowers in December.)

Ok, so in the mean time, here's the crown jewel of my dining room:

 

I did it! I made my steampunk wreath!

There were a lot of different directions I could have gone for this wreath, and at one point I was planning to make two, because - as you know - Christmas makes me go a little crazy. Anyway, reality intervened, so I didn't get to the second one, which would have been copper and purple and hot-air-balloon themed. I still have plans for a more casual, hardware-store version, though, for every-day use next year.

Anyway, for this one I started with a strand of garland and a wire wreath form, since I couldn't find a plain wreath I liked. (They all looked so cheap and fake.) My strand of garland made for a pretty sparse wreath, though, and it was three pains and a half to wire down, so in the future I'm definitely going with the pre-made ones.

And here's my "process:"

Anyone with cats knows this is how all crafting gets done.

I collected all the items I thought I might possibly want to use - goggles, keys, clocks, ornaments, etc. - and began laying them out. Originally I wanted to use my copper nutcracker, but later decided an all-brass theme would be sparklier. I'm sure a lot of you recognize most of the big stuff I used, too, from John's goggles to the oversized key we made for our steampunk newborn shoot.

The nutcracker side of the wreath is my favorite:

I love my little refurbished clock up there, and I'm sure you don't have to ask if that hidden Mickey is intentional. (I made that, too, from a big jingle bell and two mini-tree ornaments.)

The hardest lesson I learned with wreath-making is that you can't decorate it flat on a table, because when you pick it up everything will shift and move and generally not hang at ALL like you pictured. I had to re-wire almost everything when I picked mine up, since so many things moved or slipped. (URG.) In the future I'll hang it on the wall first and work on it vertically.

 

After working all night on the wreath I stood back, looked it over, and hated it. It just seemed so clunky and disjointed. In despair I made up a bunch of brass wire curly sprigs (just bending wire around a chopstick) and also tucked in a few more of those die-cut gears I love so much. Somehow those two finishing touches brought the whole wreath together for me, and now I love it.

The bow is the most rigged thing I've ever done, and you'd laugh if you could see the back side of it. Staples and wire GALORE. The bow center is something I made a while ago to become another steampunk medal, but I've yet to find a good ribbon for it. I think it makes a nice centerpiece for the wreath, though, don't you?

K, that's my wreath! I hope you guys like it, and that you have an awesome weekend!