DIY Christmas Decorations: Button Wreath

My foster brother get's mental about Christmas as soon as Halloween is over & as soon as the advent calendar goes up he needs to be kept busy otherwise Christmas ends up being cancelled. So this year I thought I'd test kid friendly Christmas decorations on him so I can confirm that all of these are kid friendly (he may be technically 15 but an 8 year old would run circles round him).
Anyway, this one was his favourite so I thought I'd start with it....

There are tutorials for these all over the internet so I won't go into too much detail. All the tutorials I saw did however use wire & wire cutters which aren't exactly kid friendly....or easy for anyone to use.
So my big change? Pipe cleaners. I got the fluffy ones & the tinsel ones & I have to say that the fluffy ones I got (from hobbycraft) bald very quickly & the colour from the buttons comes off onto it as you can (embarrassingly) see in this picture a little bit.

I used the pots of mixed buttons, also from hobbycraft -there's a big one near where I live & it's just convenient - which are £4 & make about 5 wreaths at the size I made (about a 2cm circumference) which means that with the tinsel pipe cleaners (£2) the ornaments work out at £1.20 each...not the cheapest ornaments but I swear to you kids LOVE making them & you end up with a LOT of left over pipe cleaners (20) which are great for pipe cleaner snowflakes (not the prettiest things but my foster brother made 5 of those bringing down the cost per ornament to 60p).

Anyway, what you do is make a loop in one end of the pipe cleaner & then you start stringing buttons until there are enough that you can make a decent wreath shape by bending the pipe cleaner up to the loop. Once you get to that point, wrap what is left of the pipe cleaner around the loop you started with to close the wreath. That's it...the hardest part is getting the buttons onto the pipe cleaner & that is only a problem with really tiny ones.

Wheelingalong24