Craft Project: How to Make a Candy CD Christmas Wreath

Christmas wreaths are both traditional and fun. This shiny and sparkling Christmas Wreath is made from recycled CD's and looks good enough to eat. (However it is not edible, it is just decorative). This festive craft reflects the traditional colors of Christmas, green and red, and it is topped off with a golden painted pinecone and curls of ribbon gently and loosely draped for a contemporary yet elegantly simple effect.

This Candy CD Christmas Wreath is both a great conversation piece and very easy to create. The CD Wreath can be made from promotional CD's you've collected from junk mail, such as Netscape or Aol disks or earthlink, etc. Or, because CD's are so inexpensive, you can buy a cheap spindle to make a few wreaths.

This Candy CD Christmas Wreath bounces light and it shimmers and sparkles. It's so fun and easy to make, you will probably want to make extras as gifts. With adult supervision, children can help make these too. This Candy CD Christmas Wreath is a reflection of American Pop Culture and Christmas tradition with a sprinkling of nature.

Here's what you'll need:

You'll need:

14 CD's (if you want a larger wreath you can use more CD's)

green craft paint and a sponge ( a small bottle costs about 75 cents)

8 ounce package of hard candy wrapped in red cellophane, such as cinnamon discs. (costs about $1 at Walgreen's or Wal-Mart)

Some gold and green metallic curling ribbon or thin metallic green wire garland

metallic gold craft paint (or you can use red if you prefer)

Hot glue gun/glue

Scissors

Instructions:

1. Lay a large piece of cardboard or some open cut paper bags, so you don't drip any glue or spill any paint on your table.

2. Paint pinecone with a sponge dipped in metallic gold paint. Set aside to dry.

3.Remove the CD's from their cardboard mailers or plastic packaging and lay in a stack. Count out 14.

4. Lay CD's in a circle shaped wreath so you can guestimate where and how you will be gluing and overlapping. If you want to use a sewing pencil or crayon to mark lines to let you know where CD's will be joined, now is the time to do so. Write on the side with the advertising.

5. Heat glue gun and begin gluing CD's together, one overlapping the next. You want the advertising side of the CD face up when you are gluing, because the advertising side will become the back of the CD wreath. Keep at least part of the CD center hole exposed so there is room to run the wire and curled ribbon through.

6. As you glue each CD, press the 2 glued CD's with your hand for 10 seconds to make sure glue is flattened and bond is secure. Repeat the procedure until you finally have a full circle wreath of CD's.

7. Turn CD wreath over, so now it is the plain silver shiny side up, with no advertisements. Take a cotton handkerchief or CD cleaning cloth and wipe the CD's to rid of any fingerprints.

8. Pour some green craft paint on sponge and lightly dab and press the front of the CD wreath, as you add green color. You don't want to completely color the CD's, you want the silver or gold to shine through, so just lightly sponge to add some "color" but allowing some of the natural metallic background to shine through. The craft paint should take about 10 minutes or less to dry.

9. When paint is dry, use your hot glue gun to attach the red cellophane wrapped candy. Two or 3 candies is enough for each CD. Use 4 at most for any given CD, so you can keep an open air effect and not over embellish.

10. Begin loosely threading metallic curled ribbon or thin wire garland through the various CD center holes. You can curl the metallic ribbon with scissors. Don't over embellish with ribbon, keep it light.

11. Attach your painted pinecone at the top of the Christmas wreath by using ribbon through one of the CD holes.

12. To hang, just use the metallic ribbon. The wreath is lightweight enough, that the ribbon hangs it easily from a door nail.

Tips:

If you don't want to paint the CD's green, you can use gold CD's
You can get a pinecone from the outdoors, and don't need to buy one.
You can leave the pinecone unpainted and natural. The gold painted pinecone, however is very striking.