We used 9-year-old cupcake liners and construction paper to make the cupcake liners and poinsettia origami Christmas wreath that hangs on our front door.
What’s the point in making a wreath? Why not just buy one and hang it on the door? It’s about wanting something unique—a wreath that has no duplicate, a wreath that we made from scratch, a wreath that we will always cherish because the bonding time that came with its creation is simply priceless.
Besides, we have so much stuff to make crafts from recycled materials—old Christmas decor, lengths of bamboo discovered in Alex’s bedroom, rolls of ribbon that I had forgotten about, crepe paper in so many colors that I didn’t know we had, popsicle sticks…
And then, there are things that I didn’t ordinarily consider as “crafts materials”—like cupcake liners.
You’ll need cupcake liners with crinkled sides for this project. Small or large, it doesn’t matter.
You’ll also need a “ring” on which to attach the cupcake liners. There are styrofoam rings made for crafting but the ones I found online were much too expensive at around PHP1,000.00 (about US$20) per piece. Meanwhile, I still had a few bare wreaths made with dried grass that I bought almost nine years ago. I simply wrapped one with plain white canvas. Scrap canvas that I dug up from the linen closet.
Was wrapping the wreath with canvas necessary? Yes. If I had stuck pins in an unwrapped wreath, the pins would be too loose and likely to fall off one by one even before all the cupcake liners were in place. I cut the canvas into strips about an inch and a half wide and wrapped the strips around the wreath using ordinary glue. I let the glue dry and then got to work.
Once you have your wreath prepped, start separating the cupcake liners. How many you’ll need depends on the size of the wreath. Mine was 14 inches in diameter and I used 200 cupcake liners, more or less. I didn’t really count. But the pins came in boxes of 100 and I used up almost two boxes so that would make the total around 200.
Once you have separated the cupcake liners, invert them one by one so that the colored side is on the inside.
Take an inverted cupcake liner and scrunch it up a bit by gathering together the bottom into loose folds.
Insert a pin into the loosely folded bottom.
Press the pin into the wreath all the way through so that the cupcake liner is securely held in place.
Now, where to pin the first cupcake liner… Because I intended to hang my cupcake liner wreath on the door, there was no need to decorate the back side.
I pinned the liners in three rows. The first row ran around the middle of the outer edge of the wreath. I kept the pins an inch apart and completed one row before starting a second.
On the right side of the photo above, you can see the completed first row.
For the second row, I measured 3/4 inch below the first row and inserted the pins between the pins on the first row. Alternating spots, in other words, to really fill up the spaces.
For the third row, I measured 3/4 inch below the second row and, again, inserted the pins between the pins on the second row.
If your wreath is on the thick side, or if your cupcake liners are small, or both, you may need to do more than three rows. Three rows for the girth of my wreath and the size of my cupcake liners were just right.
If you intend to add other things to the wreath, leave space where you’ll be putting them. I left enough space for three origami poinsettias and ribbons underneath.
And that is the DIY Christmas wreath that I proudly hung on our front door.
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