Other stuff

DIY retro winter village wreath

I’m so inspired by a few bloggers/Instagrammers who are able to live in almost authentic vintage decor. They embody gorgeous retro style in a way I’ve never managed to achieve in my daily life. But to add a little mid-century charm to my home I made this small winter village wreath inspired by this one on the Martha Stewart website.

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The Putz style mini houses take colour inspiration from 50s Americana. The bottle brush trees in teal, gold, silver and white could have been bleached and dyed in the same palette but blend nicely as they were. Glittery details and fristy fake snow make it feel extra festive!
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First things first. I bought this 35cm wide fake wreath from eBay, quite the bargain but I should have gone a bit bigger. I flocked it with fake snow by mixing Daz washing powder with a little water so it had a gloopy thick paste-like texture and slopped it over the branches. I popped it in the airing cupboard until the paste set hard and the pink colour crystals had faded away.
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The houses were made from cardstock printed at home with this very versatile FREE template from Martha Stewart. I actually had a lot of fun with these by mixing and matching the architectural elements and getting inspired to design my own tweaks to the templates.
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I used a scalpel to cut everything out and a pair of scissors for scoring the folds. I mocked a few up first (see above) then I painted each with tester pots of emulsion I had lying around before construction and used pva glue to assemble.
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Adding thick pva glue, spread on the roof before sprinkling glitter in place was the messiest part. In a final bit of inspiration I glued baking parchment behind the windows to appear like panes of glass before gluing each building onto its snowy base, made from packing material William Gee had happened to use in a recent parcel sent to me!!
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I bought a pack of 46 trees of different sizes and colours and arranged them in pairs, adding some to sit alongside the houses. After testing out the placement of everything I glued everything in place and added a hanging ribbon. A bigger base wreath would have meant a more extravagant finished effect but this suits my hallway nicely. In hindsight these coloured trees might have been cuter? But I love the sparkles of mine and I have plenty more for crafting with next year.Christmas,vintage,retro,crafting,crafts,puts,Americana,wreath,flocking,diy, almond rock