Gingerbread Man Wreath

I LOVE Christmas and if I had it my way I would start putting decorations up in November, thankfully Christmas crafting is acceptable in November (and earlier!). I craft a lot throughout the year but there is something extra special about doing Christmas crafts.

This wreath was inspired by a few things, one being a wreath my aunty has in her house that was made out of felt gingerbread shapes and the other being this Lego gingerbread house that I am dreaming of making come December. It's also a relatively easy and cheap DIY and it's a great one to get the kids involved with too.

You will need:
Wooden wreath base - like this one 
Air dry clay (I bought it in brown)
Acrylic paint in brown and a variety of colours (I used red, blue, yellow, green, white and gold)
Glitter and/or small gems (I used superfine glitter and some small gems I had in my craft stash)
Super glue
PVA glue
Ribbon in a matching colour - I used some medium sized red ribbon
Permanent marker - I used a fine tip marker for outlining and a thicker tip for the faces.
Gingerbread man cookie cutter and any other Christmassy shapes such as stars, angels, hearts etc along with the gingerbread man I did candy canes to go between them.
Other embellishments - I had some candy cane hearts leftover from another project.
Varnish

1. Taking the gingerbread man cookie cutter roughly measure how many shapes (measuring hand to hand) it takes to fill the wreath then add 3-5 to the number (for some spares). This is how many gingerbread men you will need to cut out.
2. Roll out the clay and cut out gingerbread men, it doesn't matter if they aren't perfect you want them to look like cookies. I also cut out some candy canes using a small cutter I had to go between the gingerbread men. Let dry according to instructions (about 24-48 hours)
3. If the clay isn't brown or not gingerbread coloured enough paint brown, in my case despite the clay being brown I decided to paint them a darker colour - I found a sponge was great in helping get around the edges and give a smooth finish.
4. Once dry, paint in the details such has bowties, buttons and scarfs using a variety of colours (I found for some of the details it was better to paint them on with white paint first then go over them in a colour). Draw on the faces and outline the areas if needed with the permanent marker - I also took a toothpick and dotted on a tiny amount of white on the eyes.
5. Using a tiny amount of super glue, glue on the gems and add glitter, I used small gems for the buttons and middle of the bowties and used glitter on the red stripes of the candy canes. For the glitter I find it often less messy to mix in the glitter into PVA glue and then paint it on.
6. Arrange the clay shapes and other embellishments on the wreath base and work out if you want to paint the base if its showing through (I ended up  doing a coat of white followed by 2 coats of gold), once you're happy with how the shapes are positioned super glue them on. As my wreath had holes in it I made sure that the bulk of them were covered up by the shapes so this affected where I positioned them and the spaces in between. After the glue has had a chance to set (a few hours) give the wreath a coat of varnish and let dry overnight.
7. Attach ribbon to the wreath and tie a bow.
8. Step back and admire your wreath.

I did this over the course of a week due to drying time and wanting to take my time, this was my schedule:
Day 1 - cut out shapes and left to dry on a lined baking tray.
Day 3 - painted shapes with a base coat.
Day 4 - added detail to shapes and once dry added gems, glitter and final touches.
Day 5 - Painted wreath base letting dry between coats.
Day 6 - stuck the shapes to the wreath base and varnished.
Day 7 - attached ribbon to the wreath