DIY Pool Noodle Christmas Wreath

If you’ve been following me for a while you know that I picked up LOADS of baubles at a ridiculous bargain price a few years ago. I have literally made SO many projects but I’ve still got loads left over. And so for a while now I have been wanting to make a pool noodle Christmas wreath for our fireplace.

Do you have load of baubles and a free afternoon? .. sell all of them, run for the hills and use the money to buy yourself something nice!! 🙂

Only kidding of course, but you know when you’ve got a project in mind but then you underestimate just how BIG a project it’s going to be? .. You get me?! .. this was one of those moments. It’s not difficult, but it did take a few hours to get it done. BUT .. I think it was soooo worth it!! Wait until you see how it’s turned out! And don’t miss the update since originally posting this project!!

Here’s what I used

2 pool noodles
Kitchen knife
Strong adhesive tape (I used carpet tape because it was on sale!)
Baubles … so .. many … baubles!! (I recommend hitting the sales, charity shops, or check out Facebook Market Place for bargains – that’s where I got mine!)
Hot glue

how to make your pool noodle Christmas wreath

First things first, the aim was to create a massive circle base by taping 2 pool noodles together. Turns out that was a little too ambitious .. It was actually slightly too big for where it was going to go.

So I cut some small bits off each of the noodles to get it to the right size for our fireplace.

I then just taped the 2 halves together to create a big circular shape. (In actual fact it was slightly oval but by pushing it into the right shape as I was gluing, it set into a circle as I was working on it.)

Next it was time to make a cuppa and heat up that glue gun!

MAKING A START

I’m sure there’s different ways of doing this project but I started by working on the inside of the circle first.

Pull off the caps of the baubles (sorry, I forgot to take photos of this bit!) and check where the top touches the pool noodle when you go to glue it down.

With a kitchen knife I made a small incision to push the top of the bauble into the gap, adding plenty of hot glue on the top of the bauble to stick it down to the noodle. Beware that adding hot glue straight onto the pool noodle may cause it to melt, depending on how hot your gun is.

For extra stability and grip I added a small amount of hot glue to the side of each bauble also to attach them to each other. Complete the inside.

Follow the same process for the outside until the whole circle has been filled.

Fill up the gaps!

Now it’s a case of filling it up! Hot glue more baubles on top of the inside layer, as well as the outside layer to narrow the gap and cover the noodle.

Add a final row of bigger baubles to completely cover the final gap. Effectively I had 5 rows of larger sized baubles, all glued down to each other.

Keep going!! You’ve come so far .. don’t give up now!! Finally I used medium sized and smaller baubles to fill up some of the smaller gaps. I added hot glue where the baubles are touching each other.

Go over the whole of the wreath, filling up gaps where needed. If you are really bothered by some of the smaller gaps that you can’t fill, you can snip off some tinsel and push it into the gaps to really fill it out.

And this was the final result .. it’s a BEAST! However, it’s surprisingly light.

Putting up the pool noodle wreath

For the moment of truth .. hanging it above the fire place.

I made a small hole in the pool noodle where the tape is to fit over a nail. We already had a nail in the wall where a picture normally is, so it was just a case of slotting it into place.

It certainly makes a statement in our lounge! I’m not normally a fan of our red wall, but come Christmas time the colours work perfectly!

Because of the size of the pool noodle wreath and the bright colours I actually kept the rest of our fireplace fairly neutral this year.

The one problem I can foresee is storing this beast after Christmas! I don’t think our loft hatch is big enough to fit it! … Didn’t quite think this through 😉

I might just have to keep it up all year round! .. don’t tempt me 😉 #christmasallyearround

update!!

So, since hanging this above our fireplace, we all decided it needed something else .. and so my Silhouette machine was put to good use to cut this vinyl.

We normally have a picture above the fireplace so I won’t even have to remove the wording for next year!

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