Advent Wreath

Advent Wreath Craft for Catholic Kids

November 23, 2012 By Lacy

We’re getting ready for Advent around here, and I love making Advent wreaths with my kids. Last year we made a functional Advent wreath craft with birthday cake candles, and we love those! This year we tried something a little different that’s cheaper and easier for little kids.

Craft Supplies Needed to Make these Advent wreaths:

Pipe Cleaners (1 Green and 2 Yellow per wreath)
Pony Beads (24 purple and 8 pink per wreath)
Green tulle (you could substitute ribbon, fabric scraps, or evergreen)

That’s it! These are super easy to put together. I wanted to think of something that didn’t involve a Styrofoam wreath because that stuff is so expensive! What are they thinking charging those kinds of prices for Styrofoam??? So start by making your green pipe cleaner into a circle, and twisting it together.

Take a yellow pipe cleaner, and cut it in half. Then fold one piece in half again, and pinch it over your green circle. This will be your first “candle”.

Take a pony bead, and put it over both ends of the yellow pipe cleaner. Push it down firmly. The force of the beads will hold your candle upright.

Put 7 more pony beads on, so 8 total for each candle.

Push all the beads down firmly, then open the pipe cleaner ends to hold them on.

Then shape the top like a flame on a candle, bring the 2 ends together, and give them a twist.

Repeat until you have an Advent wreath with 3 purple candles, and 1 pink one.

Now add “greenery” around your wreath. We first did this by tying little pieces of tulle all the way around, tu-tu style. To do this, I’d say you need to cut your toulle in pieces about 3 inches long. If they’re a little wider, the wreath gets full faster.

We used several shades of touille to do this. You can either get tulle from the fabric section (it’s very cheap per yard) or you can get it in rolls in the wedding section of craft stores.

It does take some patience to tie on enough pieces of toulle to make a full wreath, so I decided for my little kids, to give them one long piece of touille and let them wrap it around and around the wreath instead.

This worked very well. When you get all the way around the wreath, just tie or tuck in the ends. It’s a very fast alternative to all the tying. You could definitely substitute cheap green garland, evergreen, fabric scraps, green ribbons, or whatever else you can think of for the wreath.

*UPDATE* I have a lot of comments about the candles falling over when making this craft. Pushing the beads down firmly worked for us and held the candles up. I never post crafts that don’t work- nothing is posted on this blog before I test it. My best guess is that some pony beads made with bigger holes in the middle, and those won’t hold the pipe cleaners upright. My suggestion would be to either hot glue them into place to stand straight up, or even put wads of green clay around the bottom before tying on your tulle. White glue would also work, but then you have to let it dry. I’d probably use hot glue.

Related Articles:

Advent Wreath Craft for kids with Real Candles!
Edible Advent Wreath Snack
Make Pink and Purple Candles for Advent (from cheap, white pillar candles!)
6 Ways to Kick off Advent with a Religious Bang!
Advent Wreath Ideas

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Filed Under: 12 December, Advent Wreath, Advent/Christmas, Candles, Crafts for Kids, Liturgical Year, My Crafts 22 Comments

Advent Wreath Craft for Kids

November 25, 2010 By Lacy

I’ve been crafting Advent wreaths with my preschool co-op, my own children, and, well, pretty much every Catholic child that I come in contact with!

As I’m sure you can instantly tell, this advent wreath is child sized, and crafted with pink and purple birthday candles. This is a great way to have fun with kids for advent!

These wreaths can be made for about a dollar a piece. The Styrofoam circles I got 2/$1 at the Dollar Tree, along with the “wired pine”. I cut the center of the circles out ahead of time with a seraded steak knife to make it a wreath shape. (Use caution when you do this please!) You can buy small pre-made Styrofoam wreaths at AC Moore for $1.50 each, but I needed several for my preschool co-op class. I also got enough red berries at the Dollar Tree for all the wreaths for just $1. The birthday candles came from my local grocery store for .99/box. Obviously, you need pink and purple, so you will need 2 boxes.

Have the children paint the wreaths green. They love this! I know you could start with floral foam which is already green, but that stuff is super crumbly and will make a big mess with small kids. It also won’t be durable. It doesn’t matter if they don’t paint it perfectly, but try toencourage them to paint the inside and outside of the circle as well asthe top. As you can see, we used foam brushes. I think foam brushes areespecially handy for small children.

After painting, allow to dry.

The wired pine we used as kind of a lacing exercise. It’s not glued at all, just wound around the wreaths and twisted together at the ends.

We let the kids squeeze on their own glue and stick on the clusters of berries. It’s ok if they use a lot of glue – it will dry eventually!

Because the regular Styrofoam is stiffer than floral foam, you can’t stick the candles right in. First, poke the holes with a Philips head screw driver, and have the kids insert the candles themselves.

Here’s one that I made where the pine stuff was all glued on top of the wreath with a glue gun. We’re going to be using this as my class’s advent wreath on our prayer table.

The kids in my class had such a great time making these!

Here’s Julian’s. He is so proud of it!

You can substitute other Christmas greenary for the wired pine.
Just attach with glue.

Yes, these are working advent wreaths, so they can be lit. But please use caution and don’t burn your children… or you teddy bear.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I’ll see you back here on Monday with a very special (and unprecedented) Cyber Monday post!!! Don’t do any of your Catholic holiday shopping before then!!!

Filed Under: 12 December, Advent Wreath, Advent/Christmas, Christmas Crafts, Liturgical Year, My Crafts 14 Comments

Make Pink and Purple Advent Candles

November 23, 2010 By Lacy

As anyone who follows my facebook page knows, I’ve had trouble finding pink and purple candles for Advent this year. But really, this is nothing new- it’s hard every year. Sure, I could order them, but crafting them for super cheap is more my style

I started with regular white pillar candles from the Dollar Tree. See? (For the record, this green wreath is also from the Dollar Tree. I embellished it with this awesome glittery stuff I got on clearance after last Christmas and attached them with a glue gun. It cost me $3 to make the wreath, so with the candles it cost a total of $7).

Then I “painted” the candles with pink and purple crayons. I know a lot of people are into beeswax, but I hear crayola is on it’s way in. If your house is anything like mine, you probably have a bucket of broken crayon bits somewhere. Just peel them and discard the papers. (This is a great job for the 4 year old in your life.)

Painting with wax is actually called encaustic painting, and I did a little of it in college. That’s how I knew it wasn’t going to be the big pain-in-the-booty you might be thinking it is. All you do is put your wax in a shallow can (like a tuna can) and set it on you griddle on low. By the way, totally leave it to me to find craft uses for all of your kitchen stuff. It’s soooo much more fun that way!

It doesn’t take long for the wax to start melting this way, and you just leave it on the heat while you work. Little disclaimer to say this is really not a craft for small kids, and please don’t burn anyone.

You can stir it a little as it melts with a metal spoon. Don’t worry, all the wax will chip right off the spoon when it hardens, which won’t take long. Begin painting the wax onto your candles, but don’t use your favorite paint brush.

Don’t try and make it look perfect, because you can’t. Just enjoy that home-crafted look. It’s fancy to have a hand crafted feel, like hand made soap or something, and I love it the personality it adds!

It covered very nicely for me in one coat, and it was very fast and easy to do. I would suggest painting your pink candle first so that you can use the same brush without attempting to clean it. A little bit of pink on your brush won’t contaminate your purple paint.

Here’s my wreath with my newly painted pink and purple candles!

I’m aware that I’m posting a lot of pictures, but I’m really in love with my advent wreath this year! We’re traveling for Thanksgiving, so I wanted it to be ready to go as soon as we get back. I got the pink place mat under the wreath also at the Dollar Tree. I love that store!!!

For the pink one I painted the wick and everything, but I don’t like the look as well as leaving the wick white. And yes, I did try coloring with the candles, and yes- it totally worked!

I hope you guys aren’t advented-out yet because I have another advent wreath craft coming your way soon! And anyone who missed yesterday’s edible advent wreath should go check it out!

*Updated to Say* Here’s how they’re burning:

The candle had a little trouble burning through the layer of crayon. I absorbed a little of the melted wax away from the wick with a paper towel, and now it’s burning beautifully! Other readers say that theirs are burning fine although the crayon seems to burn slower than the rest of the candle. I guess it depends on what kind of candle you start with. Mine are just super cheap candles from the Dollar Tree. Hope this answers your questions!

Filed Under: 12 December, Advent Wreath, Advent/Christmas, Christmas Crafts, Liturgical Year, My Crafts 30 Comments

Edible Advent Wreath for Kids

November 22, 2010 By Lacy

As advent approaches, you might try making this super fast and easy Advent snack to learn about advent wreaths. All you need is store bought doughnuts (or if you’re really awesome make them from scratch), birthday candles in pink and purple, sugar, and green food coloring. I highly suggest Krispy Kreme doughnuts, the best doughnuts in the whole wide world, but I can’t get theme where I live.

Talk to your kids about how advent wreaths are round (like the doughnut) andjust like God- there is no beginning and no end. Then make some green sugar (I had some left over from Mardi Gras) and sprinkle thedoughnuts. Evergreens are a symbol of eternal life.

Tell your kids that the purple candles stand for royalty because Jesus is our Prince of Peace. The pink candle is the color of a rose. Light the candles and tell them what each one stands for as you do. The first purple candle stands for hope, the second one for love, the pink candle joy, and the last purple candle stands for peace. We light the advent candles to remind us that Jesus is the light of the world and from the darkness he brings life. (Little disclaimer here to remind you not to burn your children).

What order should you light your advent candles in?

Light the purple candle across from the pink one first and then go around clockwise.

I love this “Jesus is the Gift” plate it’s on! I got it at the blogging conference I went to, and I wish I had the whole set!

The Jesus is the Gift Snowflake Collectionis available from Dayspring. I really wish I had this platter and the pitcher. We might use our little plate for setting out Santa’s cookies this year.

Jesus is the Gift Snowflake Collection - 16

I know some families give up sweets for Advent. If this is true for your family, maybe you could make round soft pretzels and green salt. Be creative, and happy waiting!