We’re getting ready for Advent around here, and I love making Advent wreaths with my kids. When kids craft their own, they are always so excited about and proud of what they make. Also, they remember a lot of things about Advent wreaths after creating one themselves. It helps them remember the color of the candles, what the candles stand for, etc. And they are excited to use it! You can check out all of my awesome Advent wreath resources for families here. Now we are going to make this fun Advent wreath craft from pipe cleaners and pony beads. I can’t wait!
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.
Post continues after this brief information about the Catholic Icing Monthly Membership
Monthly Liturgical Membership
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, tutu style. To do this, I’d say you need to cut your tulle in pieces about 3 inches long. If they’re a little wider, the wreath gets full faster.
We used several shades tulle 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 tulle to make a full wreath, so I decided for my little kids, to give them one long piece of tulle 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.
darling craft. perfect for my boys. i may actually have all the supplies on hand. thanks fir sharing!
What a cute craft! I think I may do this with my Sunday School class – they’d love it.
(You might want to change the title of this post a bit, though, you don’t need to be Catholic (we’re not) to appreciate or make an adorable Advent wreath!)
So cute! My kids love pipe cleaners and beads, so this sounds great!
How sweet Lacy! Perfect craft for little hands!
How did you keep your candles to stand up? Mine keep falling over.
Great Craft!
I was so happy to find these Advent Wreath. I have been out all afternoon trying to find something different to make Advent wreaths with my Sunday school class Sunday and could not come up with anything, I told myself I’ll just go home and take a look at some websites and I found these.They are great! My kids will love them. I am looking forward to doing them.
Wondering about how much tulle is needed per wreath? I want to do this with my CCD class – and don’t want to be caught short!
I’d say 1 yard would make around 5 Advent wreaths, but could definitely make more. It depends on how much you use. Good luck! 🙂
Why are our candles flopping over? Is it because I bought cheap-o pipe cleaners at Walmart?
Aha! I neglected to make sure the kids really did push down firmly – mystery solved! 🙂
This is cute. I’m a DRE and we tried this in Grades 1 and 4 this week. The kids had fun with it.
We pushed the beads down firmly, but they candles wouldn’t stand up. We could get them to stand for a minute or so and then they kept falling. If I did this again, I would have to play with the pipe cleaners to see if there is an alternate way to get them to stand by making twisting them somehow. The beads alone don’t work to make the candles stay up.
If I did this again, I think I would try to wrap it with the tulle. In 45 minutes, the kids’ tulle ties were pretty sparse. Also, in both grades there were some kids who couldn’t tie.
Also if anyone tries this don’t try to use green mesh ribbon. It’s too stiff.
Overall, I would try this craft again and try to modify it. The kids loved it. It helped them to remember the candles are pink and purple and we talked about what each candle meant. I know the kids don’t have an Advent wreath at home so I liked the idea of them bringing this home for an Advent wreath. I also made up a prayer sheet they could use at home as a family.
I am wondering if there was a resolution to the candles not staying up? I’d like to know before I do this with my RE class this weekend. Thanks for the great craft!
I’m having the same problem with my candles falling over. Any tips?
Just made these yesterday with a group of kids from our MOMS Club and the candles would not stay up. Tried tying with tulle and that didn’t help, so I tried hot glue which seems to be working. I put a little hot glue around the bottom of each candle and held it while it dried. Currently, all our candles are standing. Yeah!
Glad you figured it out! Ours didn’t seem to need glue. that’s so weird. :-/
Thank you so much for this craft–I did this with my CCD class the other day and it was great! I did modifyit a bit, though. I had found a faux evergreen garland a the dollar store, so I just cut that up into sections, and we used that instead of the green pipe cleaner. Then we didn’t even need the tulle around the bottom. I didn’t have any trouble with our candles standing up. This is a super idea; it was easy to do and the kids loved it.
I used a second pipe cleaner wrapped around the first and wrapped around each candle to stabilize the candle helped to keep them up. Not perfectly – but it helped.
I did this with my 3/4 year olds in Sunday School this morning. It was an absolute hit! I did have the same problem with the candles falling over, but since I made a model the night before I knew I needed to have extra green pipe cleaners to add support by wrapping around the base a few times. I had the bottom part made and the first bead on the candles for the kids. They loved it, and what’s more, their parents loved it too! Thanks for a great way to teach my little class about Advent!
I just wanted to say thanks for sharing this craft. I saw it and loved it; went out and bought all the items needed to make it with my first grade CCD class. I tried it at home first and decided it was too difficult for them and without someone helping me, there was no way I was going to attempt it. So, my husband made the wreaths with his 9th graders and they really enjoyed making them and were happy to be able to bring them home! Thanks for a craft perfect for even the “big kids!”
we made this in CCD tonight, and they were a huge hit! we substituted garland from the Dollar Tree (the kind that has wire in it) for the green pipe cleaner and tule due to time restrictions. It worked great! also picked up “mini” bows at Dollar Tree which really “made” the wreaths 🙂
while the paper advent wreaths are cute, these are def. more durable!
we made this in CCD tonight, and they were a huge hit! we substituted garland from the Dollar Tree (the kind that has wire in it) for the green pipe cleaner and tule due to time restrictions. It worked great! also picked up “mini” bows at Dollar Tree which really “made” the wreath.
Love this craft! We did it with our 4th grade CCD class and they loved it! I did put a little hot glue on the bottom of the wreath before they put on their tulle. They turned out perfect. Thank you for sharing!
I used perler beads instead of pony beads & it worked out great! We are using them as a craft at our advent fair this weekend.
So, my husband found the solution to the falling pipe cleaner problem. First, he twisted the yellow pipe cleaners a couple of times just to have it stay in place. Then he used a crimp plier and crimp the green pipe cleaners to the yellow pipe cleaners. Then he use the glue gun and put glue all around the base for extra reinforcement. Love the craft! Thanks for coming up with it.
I did this last year with my kindergarten class, only instead of using a green pipe cleaner and tulle, I bought the wired greenery garland from Dollar Tree and cut it into 12-14″ strips and formed them into circles. Then we wrapped the yellow pipe cleaners around the greenery. Worked great!
This was a disaster. Absolute disaster. The candles would not stay up on most of the wreaths. We had a class full of frustrated children. We followed directions to a T and just had such a hard time getting it to work out. Seems many people had the same issue of floppy pipe cleaners. Such a bummer, because we really thought it was going to work out.