Pages

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Christmas wreath with fir cones, bells and a horse

Beaded Christmas wreath

We continue our "winter" series of beading. Today we will make a Christmas wreath of  spruce branches with cones, bells and a symbol of the 2014 year - horse.
We will need:
- bugle beads # 3 of green color,
- seed beads #11: of green color for spruce branches and of yellow-brown and grey colors for cones,
- seed beads # 8: of yellow and orange colors for bells with a bow-knot and grey, brown and black colors for a horse,
- three beads 6 mm in diameter of garnet color,
- nylon line 0.25 mm in diameter and two needles for beadweaving (you can also do with only one needle),
- wire 0.3 mm in diameter (you can take a thinner wire for bells or use the same wire),
- thick aluminum or copper wire of about 2 mm in diameter for a base of the wreath,
- green thread for winding the wire.


You may have noticed that I had woven the wreath out of separate parts and all these parts we had already made before. All the tutorials you can find at our site: the tutorial for spruce branches is here, for bells - here, for cones - here and the tutorial for a horse is here. So, this Christmas wreath is a result of our work for a few years!

As I have just mentioned, to make spruce branches I had used this tutorial. The difference is that at this time I made needles not only of seed beads but of seed beads together with bugle beads. I also used another method of assembling the branches.
First, we should make little twigs. For the each twig take a wire of 30 cm in length and string onto it 2 green bugles and 1 green seed bead.




Place the set on the wire so that one end of the wire was about 7-8 cm in length. Then, holding the seed bead, pass the end of the wire that comes out from this bead backwards through the both bugles.

Tighten the wire. We’ve made the first needle.

Then choose the longer end of the wire and string 2 green bugles and 1 green seed bead onto it.

Once again, hold the seed bead and pass this wire backwards through the both bugles.

Move the set to the first needle and tighten the wire. We’ve made the second needle.




In this way make 3 more needles on the same end of the wire – the twig is ready. Don’t twist together the wires under the twig.

For my wreath I made 105 such twigs.

Now we need to collect them into branches. Take 2 twigs and twist them together so that one of the twigs lay a little below the other.

Then take one more twig and fasten it a bit lower the previous twigs.

In the same way fasten to the branch one after another 4 more twigs. So we’ve made a spruce branch consisting of 7 twigs.

Out of all the 105 twigs I made 15 branches.

When we made all the spruce branches we need to make all the other elements of the wreath: cones (I made 2 pieces), bells (you can do one or two bells; I made ​​two bells with a bow-knot) and a horse.

After that proceed to the assembling of the wreath.

Take a thick wire and make of it a hoop about 10-11 cm in diameter. This hoop will be the base of the wreath and it will prevent the wreath from sagging under its own weight.

Next take one spruce branch and fasten it to the wreath’s base.

Wind green thread around the wire at the place where the branch is fastened to the base for the length of about 2.5 cm.

Then fasten one more branch to the base of the wreath and again wind green thread around the wire for the length of about 2.5 cm.

Continue fastening all the other branches to the base and winding the wire by green thread after each branch. Among the branches attach two cones to the base so that they were located diametrically opposite to each other. Thus attach all the branches and cones, placing them around the entire circumference of the wreath.

Next, hang the horse within the wreath using the nylon line fixed to the top of the wreath. After that hang the bells to the top of the wreath.
Straighten the spruce branches (you can fold them along the wreath or spread in different directions, as you like) - the Christmas wreath is finished!


P.S. Don't want to miss new tutorials? Subscribe for email notifications of site updates!

If you like this tutorial, share it with your friends on social networks using the buttons below the post.

No comments:

Post a Comment