Ornament Letter "Wreaths"

This year I was ahead of my game when it came to Christmas.  A rarity but it was actually quite lovely.  So because I was done all my shopping, decorating and wrapping with about 3 weeks to spare I decided it was a perfect opportunity to create a craft to include with a couple of my gifts.

This year I decided to do Ornament Letters.  My plan was to do one for my mom for her birthday in the first part of December, and one for Eric's mom to include with her gift.  I chose silvers and golds for Jill's as her foyer is brown and earthy.  I chose silver and blues for my mom as her living room is grey with blue accents.
I found these little branch like things at Michaels in different colours so I picked up what I thought I needed with the intent to cut the balls off the branches.  All the other ornaments I looked at were just too large for the wooden letter(s) I'd picked out.  Turns out I needed to make a second trip because I highly underestimated how many of these little suckers I was going to need to make the letter appear full.  Thankfully I managed to score these at 60% off on my first trip and 70% off on my second trip.

I used some wire cutters and spent about an hour cutting each ball off the branch and separating them per initial.  I swear this crafting thing is cathartic, or there's something to be said about snipping one's balls.

So once I had them all removed, I was ready to begin.  It was a simple enough procedure but it still resulted in two 2nd degree burns.  Those damn glue guns can get pretty hot if you leave them to sit too long.  So be careful.  But the jist of this project is basically just to start adhering the balls to the wooden initial.  This proved to be quite the conundrum for my OCD.  You want the balls to fit just perfectly, but alas it just isn't so.  One has to let go of one's issues and let it all come together as it will.

Oh this was a fun old craft.  So fun in fact, that I was only mildly preturbed when my mother, in passing, told me she was changing the accent colour of her living room to red.  She's just 'tired' of the blue.  Groan.  This, unbeknownst to her, AFTER I already finished her lovely blue and silver "R".  So now what?  Well I lovely new neighbours whose last name happens to also start with an "R" got themselves a new Christmas decoration courtesy of their lovely new neighbours!  So back to Michaels I went for a third time for some multi-coloured balls this go around.  Now she can change her colour scheme any old time she wants!  She'll be all matchy matchy.  And this time around, I got 80% off the balls.  Oh this "turns out to be more costly than I'd anticipated gift" just got more costly affordable(?)  I actually really like how they both turned out, but I had originally hesitated doing a multi-coloured one because I thought it would be too much, but I really like it.  

Sorry , no picture of the blue and silver one because I honestly forgot and Roan was in such a hurry to bring it over to them.  So there you go, a fun, cute Christmas decoration (or year round if you will, I won't judge). Thankfully I got the main stuff on sale and I used up a gift card I had so it really wasn't too expensive for me, but I can see how this one could get away from you, cost wise if you didn't get the materials on sale.