After the failure of this years Halloween wreath and last years questionable festive wreath, I thought, “why not give it all another go?”. I went straight onto Martha Stewarts website as she is the queen of homely decorations and I found her tutorial for a Christmas village wreath which I fell in love with. You can find the tutorial here. So here we go, let’s see if I can redeem myself.

So let’s start with the little houses. Known as Putz Houses, they are normally made out of balsa wood or cardboard, and used as decorations. I thought about using cardboard but decided on balsa wood instead and I found some at my local hardware store (measurements 915 x 75 x 1mm). I purchased four sheets of balsa wood and ended up using three sheets.
I once again used a Martha Stewart stencil for the houses. I printed the putz house stencil out, then cut out the houses and roofs that I wanted. Placing the stencil on the balsa wood, I used a Stanley knife to cut out the shape and then score all markings.
With all my courage, I then bent the houses along the scored lines and using PVA glue, I glued them into their homely shapes. A few houses in, I turned to Super Glue Gel as it just set a little faster and held a lot stronger. It was a great switch and although I got glue everywhere, the houses fit and held together really well.
If you are to use balsa wood when making your own; keep in mind the direction of the wood grain. If you score along the grain line, you run the risk of the wood breaking apart but if you snap the wood against the grain, you may get a lot of splintering and the edges may not be very clean.

You can buy Putz houses but when I looked, they were either sold out or way out of budget. If you can’t find some, making them was a pretty easy process and I enjoyed taking some time out to just relax and craft.

Once all my houses were cut out and glued. I painted each house with two layers of white acrylic paint. I let both layers fully dry and then went in a coloured each house a bright and bold pattern.
Looking back, I wish I either had more pastel colours so each house was a different shade of pastel, or stuck to traditional Christmas colours such as reds, greens and whites.
To add doors onto the houses, I painted a square of balsa wood and put glue on the edges. Using a pair of tweezers, I glued the door into the doorway.

I thought about adding some white glitter to look like snow to the houses and the trees but honestly could not find bio-glitter in stores in white so I left out this step. Maybe next year I’ll add some snow but for now, we are just going with a ‘not so snowy’ look.

When it came time to assembling the wreath, I purchased a 60cm wreath as a base, because it was a big size and really full. I couldn’t be happier with it. I did debate on whether I should add flocking to the wreath but decided against it in the end as I don’t really get a snowy Christmas. I could’t find the exact wreath I used as it was sold out, but this one was quite similar.

Using a hot glue gun, I slowly glued all the houses onto the wreath. I could have benefitted by making the houses a little bit smaller as I could have made more homes but I did really like my houses in the end.

Once the houses were glued, I added a bag of bristle trees and I wish I had an extra bag or two. I know some tutorials suggested bleaching the trees but I kind of liked them just the way they were. I spread them out all over the wreath and used hot glue to secure them to the tree.

I added some stuffing at the base of the homes and along some of the tree bases as it just cleaned up the wreath a little bit. I think it looked really good and gave it a bit of a snowy feel to the village which I loved.

A final touch I added was by glueing some tiny human figurines all over the wreath to bring my village to life. The last thing I did was glue a ‘Merry Christmas’ sign to the top of the wreath which caused quite a severe hot-glue burn. Ouch.

And that’s it. I made Martha Stewarts Christmas Village wreath and I think it turned out ok. I think next time I might change the homes to be a little bit smaller and the colours to be more pastel. Perhaps some coloured bristle trees would have added to the cuteness of the wreath but I do really like the wreath as is.

Whilst researching my wreath, I came to find other blogs with the same wreath idea. I wanted to send them some love so please check out Happy Happy Nester, Paper Glitter Glue, Perfect Little Life, and Modern June Clever. All of these bloggers, found a gorgeous and unique way to create their own wreaths which I loved.

Note: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions and thoughts expressed are solely my own and not influenced in any way. This page contains affiliate links/codes which aids in funding future reviews.