I haven’t been here for a while.  The problem was that many of the crafts that I was working on where gift.  So now that Christmas is over I can share them all.  Many of them are not super Christmas theme so they will still be fun to make.

More importantly though, here is my January Wreath.

When I start thinking about a wreath I try to make it represent the month.  I think that if all my wreaths were laying out, would I be able to pick out each months wreath?  For most months that is pretty easy.  There are major holidays or theme that are synonymous with that time of year.

I think that the snow flakes, ever green branches and bare twigs represent January very well.  There is a still beauty to the dead of winter that we do not often get to see here in the Lower Main Land of BC.  But along with the coldness is a cozy warm feeling. That is what I tried to capture with this wreath.

The snow flakes were made by myself and my (now) six-year-old. We made the basic shapes out of white and silver pipe cleaners.  We used a bead in the center to hold together 3 or 4 pipe cleaners. Then added more short pipe cleaners to the ends of the legs to give them a more interesting look. Once we were happy with the look of the snowflake we soaked them in Borax dissolved in hot water.  (3 tablespoons of Borax to 1 cup of boiling hot water)  Using string and pencils we suspended the snowflakes in the Borax solution so that it would not touch the sides or the bottom of the container.It didn’t take long before there were crystals forming on the pipe cleaners.

After the crystals were formed (a few hours or overnight) we laid the snowflakes out to dry, then attached them to a wreath of greenery and twigs.

There you have it, January Wreath.  Happy New Year to all my readers.