Crochet a Mini Wreath Ornament

1. Intro & Welcome!: Crochet is the art of making things with a hook and some yarn. If you can make a loop, you can crocheting. One of the best things about learning how to crochet is how quick and easy it is to whip up handmade gifts. I'm carapace in it. And after numerous requests from people who took my other beginner crochet classes, I'm back with the simplest, quickest project yet, uh, many crochet reef ornament. Also, you step-by-step how to make a slipknot and work what's called a single crochet stitch. You'll learn how to stitch around an object, in this case the ring. And I'll show you how to wrap it all up with an invisible finish. Once you get the hang of it. These cute little gifts can be made from start to finish in just two to three minutes. For real, they make great gift toppers can seriously level up your holiday cards or just to let anyone know that you think they're special. You can give them just as they are or take advantage of the printable template that I created specifically for this project. It even has the option to customize the card with your very own message. And I'm going to show you exactly how you do it. And if you're someone who likes your instructions written out, I've also included step-by-step cheat sheet with photos of that is an excellent resource. So if you're ready, grab your favorite beverage, and join me in the next video to check out the simple supplies you'll need. 2. Supplies: To get started it, you are going to need a, a crochet hook and some yarn. This is Burnett maker Home Deck. This is my favorite yarn for this kinda stuff, but you can use whatever you have laying around or whatever you find at the craft store. This is a bulky weight yarn, which means it's a little bit thicker than the standard weight yarn that is called worsted. So that means on the label here, that means that there's a number five on the back. So it's labeled as bulky, number five. So if you want bulkier yarn, it might be number six. If you want kind of standard worsted weight yarn, it would be number 4. So it really just doesn't matter. It's just going to change the look and feel, but it will work just fine. So with my bulky weight yarn, I'm using a 5.5 millimeter hook. If you're using thicker yarn, you might need a bigger hook. If you're using thinner yarn, you might want a smaller hook. The main thing is you just need a hook and some yarn as long as you can work with it, it'll be fine. So don't get too caught up on not having exactly the right supplies. You're also going to need a wooden ring. So I have a link to the ones that I'm using that I just bought from Amazon, but you can get them at any craft store. My ring that I'm using here measures 2.5 inches from the outside diameter, so all the way across. But I've also made the same wreath with bigger rings and small rings. And it really just is whatever you have access to or whatever kinda look, you're going for something that's nice to have, but you can definitely get away without it is a yarn needle or a tapestry needle, which is just kind of a dull needle with a large ie. You don't have one of these, don't worry, I will show you how to make it work. Of course, you'll also need scissors for cutting stuff. And then to hang the ornament, you can use ribbon, you could use Raphael twine, you know, whatever. I'm using some red and white bakers Twine. So that's what you need for the wreath. If you want to use the printable card template that I've included, then you will need some paper. So some card stock or truth be told because my printer does not like me if it does not print on card stock. So what I do is I print on just regular printer paper and then I glue it to some card stock. So that's how I got around that. So in that case you might need a glue stick. And then finally, some tape. In this case I just have some washi tape that I used to attach the ornament to the card. And this down here is the Custom little message. So this says With love from the Smiths. But obviously it, you can customize that to say anything that you want. And I will show you how to do that when we get there. So that's it. The most important things are the yarn, the hook, and a ring. So gather up your goodies and in the next video I'm gonna show you how to get started. 3. Getting Started: First thing first, we are going to start with a slipknot on our yarns. So if you're totally new to crochet, you generally hold your hook in your dominant hand. So for me that'll be my right hand and the yarn goes off to your non-dominant side. So for me, that's my left. So I have my yarn going off over here. And before we get to holding the yarn and we're going to just make the slipknot. So here's how we're gonna do that. So I'm holding the tail of the orange is draping off my hand like this. And I'm going to wrap my fingers around it and I'm holding out my index finger. And then I'm going to take the yarn and I'm going to wrap it around from the front to the back twice. So that was one and there's two. And then I'm going to hold it down here. Then I'm going to take the loop, the rap that is closest to my big knuckle here. And I'm going to pick it up and pull it across and set it down. And then I'll pick up the other wrap, pick it up, pull it off the end of my finger and let go. And then when I pull on the yarn, it will make a little knot here. And it's called a slip knot because if we pull on this little tail here, we can shrink down the loop or we can pull on the loop to loosen it up. So once you've got your slip knot, then you're just gonna take your hook and slip it in there and pull on the tail until it's Nagel's right up to the hook. Now have to make it crazy tight or anything. Just just snuggle it up there. Okay. So let's talk about how we hold the yarn thin. There's lots of different ways to do it. You just ultimately you have to practice and find what works for you. This is the way that I do it. So I'm going to hold my hookup here like this. And I'm gonna put my, my index finger and my middle finger under the working yarn, like so. And then I'm going to do a spin and grab my guess. So we do a swoop like this and then rotate or spin and grab the tail. And as I'm rotating, I'm lifting up my index finger. So let's do that one more time. For those of you who are new. So I'm going to put these two fingers under a swoop under and I spin and grab. That's it. Okay, So what this enables me to do is hold the yarn and control it in several places. So I'm pinching it here on the little slip knot and that's 1 where I'm holding it. The next place is up here where it's draped over my finger. So I can control the tension by either pulling my finger away or bringing it in. And then it's going back here and through these fingers. So I'm kinda pinching it here and that's another spot. So manipulating all these places, 1, 2, and 3 where I'm holding it allows me to control attention. So if you're new to this, don't sweat it. You just practice and pretty soon it will be second nature. Okay, So now how do we get our stitches on this ring? So we're going to start by holding our ring here in front of our work. Just like this. So our yarn in our hook and everything is behind. Then we're going to start with our first single crochet. We're gonna do that by inserting our hook into the ring. So from the back I'm holding the little tail that's here. I'm holding onto that. You'll see why in a minute. But I'm holding that up here against the ring. The ring is on top of everything and I'm going to bring my hook up over and in two my ring. Then I'm going to do what's called a yarn over. And all that means is I put my yarn over my hook and pull it up. So I've pulled up a loop. Okay, So on the hook right now, I have my slip knot right here, and then I have this other loop that we just pulled through the ring. So I call that bobbing for apples. And then we need to unload our apples. And we do that by doing one more yarn over. So that means put the yarn over the hook. And then we pull that yarn through both of the loops on our hook. And that's it. That is our first single crochet. And now you can see the ring is attached. So from here it gets even easier. But let me pull this back out and we'll do it one more time. Even though you can't hit rewind on the video. But I feel you will just do it again one more time. All right, so I've got my yarn and my hook, and I'm holding the tail here up against the rib cage. So everything is behind the ring. Then I'm going to bring my hook that's got the slipknot up and into the loop, into the ring. Grab the yarn, pull up a loop. So now there's two loops on my hook. And now to offload them, to unload them, we gotta do another yarn over. So we grab that yarn and pull it through both of those loops. And that's it. You have learned how to hold your yarn, how to make a slipknot, and how to get that first single crochet on to the ring. So pat yourself on the back. Take a break. Practice a little bit if you need to get the hang of holding the yarn. And in the next video, we're going to make this wreath. 4. Make the Wreath: So now we're ready to just make the reef. The only thing that might be different for everybody you watching at home is the number of stitches that it takes to fill up your wreath. And I will just depend on the yarn that you're using and the ring that you're working with. So now we're going to just keep single crocheting around this whole ring. And you'll notice that the tail here has been basically crochet it over. So we're going to keep doing that and that will spare us from having to weave it in later. So I'm gonna just kinda hold the tail along the ring as I crochet and I'm just going to crochet right over it. And that will tuck it in for us. So now we're going to just repeat that whole process of single crochets. So we'll go and take our hook. We're going to dive into the pool, grab some yarn, pull up a loop. We've got two loops on our hook and now we need to offload. So we yarn over and grab some yarn again, pull it through both loops. That's it. That's another single crochet. Let's do a couple more. So we'll dive in, grab some yarn, pull it up, grab some yarn, pull it through both of those rings. And as you go you might pull on the tail just to kind of snugged up in there and keep it keep it from getting bunched up. And we'll keep going. Insert our hook, grab some yarn, pull up a loop, do another yarn over, and pull that yarn through both of the loops on the ring. So we're seriously should just give me do that all the way around. Just to give you some context here, how many have we done? Let me pull my hook out and we'll take a little bit of a look. So when we look from the top, we see what I referred to as little fish loops, fish lips. So we have this one here. This is what my hook was in, so this doesn't count. But behind that we see 123. And then this one, the very first one we did is probably a little bit smaller. It might be tight and it might be kind of deformed a little bit. It might be kinda pulled to the back. That's okay. And then you'll see the slipknot. So we've got 1234 so far. So we'll keep going. You might need 18 stitches, you might need 24 anywhere in between. Who knows? So I'm just gonna keep going. Insert my hook, grab the yarn, pull it up, do another yarn over, pull it through. I love this project because it's just the same stitch over and over and you don't have to count because you'll know when you're done. So I'm just gonna keep going. And I just it's so fast. So as you work, you can keep pulling on the tail to get it so it's not bunched up. And, you know, if things are loose and spread out, you might need to just slide them around. This project is also very forgiving, I feel like. And it's just, it's so fun and so simple. And last year I made a bunch of these and put them on gift, like as gift toppers. Or I gave people some Christmas wine and hung the little ornament over the neck of the bottle. And it was really cute. I also, I even did some cross stitching and used this as a frame for some of them. So there are so many possibilities. Now, don't worry, if your tail is not this long. You don't have to wrap the tail in around the whole wreath. So just to prove that to you, I'm going to leave it out from now. The main thing is that we just wanted it wrapped in for a portion of the wreath so that it doesn't come poking out. And, and that's, that's called weaving in your ends. And that keeps the whole thing from unraveling. So I'm going to just leave the tail out for the last few stitches just to show you how that works. So the tails out and then keep going. And do I have enough? I might, you want to, you know, it's kinda of a fine line between putting too many stitches that they get bunched up and not having enough that you don't cover it. So I think I've got enough. I might be even able to pull some out to show you how you would do that. If you want to pull some out, if you make too many, you get carried away. You just take your hook out and you take your working under the yarn and you can just pull out and it'll pop right out of there, pop and then pull out like that. And then you could stick your hook back in here. Maybe you make a stitch you want to just do over or I think I'll just keep that one out. Perfect. So once you get all the way around and your ring is covered, we are ready to fasten off. So like I said, that might be 24 sausages and might be 18. Whatever number you have as long as your wreath is covered and it doesn't look punchy, then you're right on target. So in the next video, I'm going to show you how we tie this off for a flawless finish. 5. Invisible Finish: Alright, once we have our ring covered and our tail is possibly in here, somewhere here, possibly hanging out. We are ready to cut the asana, set my work down and you really don't need a lot of of yarn. So I'm cutting mine about like that. And then you're gonna take your hook and just pull that loop that's on your hook. Pull it all the way till the yarn, pull through it and out like that. So we can see that the yarn is coming out of the last pair of fish lips that we made. And now we're ready to use our yarn needle. If you don't have a tapestry needle or a yarn needle, you can just use your hook or any other needle, anything you can do to just drag the yarn through a couple of the loops. I'll show you like this. So here's a tip for threading your yarn needle if you fold the yarn over in half like this. So you're not dealing with the end. And then you can kind of pinch it. That makes it a little bit easier to get it through the eye of the needle. Especially if you're working with bulkier yarn. So this technique that I'm going to show you is called an invisible finish and it works like this. Here is our last stitch. Here is my very first stitch which I made just too dang tight. So hopefully yours is not as tight as mine, but because minus so tight, I'm going to ignore it and I'm going to go into my next stage. So by tight, I mean, that is kind of pulling off into the back. Maybe I pulled on retail too hard. So it's kinda just deformed and it's not going to work very well for this. So I'm going to go into the next stitch. And what we're gonna do is create sort of a fake stitch in-between our last stitch and our first stitch, if yours is not this type or our second stitch in my case. So from your, your side, you're gonna go underneath these two fish lips to the back and pull your yarn through. Not crazy tight. Then you're going to bring the yarn toward you. And here are those two lips from our last stitch. Here's the yarn coming out between them. And now we're going to go in from above and just go underneath the back lit. So the front lip is the one closest to you. The backlit is the one towards the back. And unlike over here where we went underneath both lips, now we're just gonna go underneath this back one. And when we pull that through there, look at that. We basically made a fake stitch. So here was our last stitch. Here's my second stitch. My first stitch is back here. Just kinda just swallowed up. And know that it's you can't even tell. It looks just like all the other stitches. So with the rest of the yarn here, we need to do something with this tail, right? Because if we just cut it off, it can pull out to easily. So we're going to hide it just like we hit this tail. I'm just going to take it and slide it underneath. This is where the needle is helpful, but you could do this also with a hook. It would just kind of be more of a pain. But and if you had a smaller hook, it would be easier. But you would stick your hook underneath there to grab the yarn and then pull it through and you don't have to do a bunch. So I'm just pulling it underneath all of this. And I'm working back towards the direction that we came from. And let's see. So I stuck it under it or no lake four or five stitches. And then it's just coming out here and then we're ready to cut it. So when we do that, I'm going to pull it so that when I snip it off, it kind of retracts and sucks back in underneath the yarn. So same thing. This is the tail now from before. And I'm going to pull that snug snippet. And it will just talk back in and look at that. We have a totally finished wreath. Then we'll take some of our ribbon twine, string, whatever. And I think I'm just I don't know, I didn't measure this but it's, you know, this long. It's probably like 15 inches or so. Going to cut that off. So what we're gonna do now that we've cut our Twine is we're going to thread it through one of the, two of the stitches on our wreath. So you can again use your yarn needle or just to show you how you would do it with a hook. I've got a slightly smaller hook here. This is a four millimeter hook. So I'll pick a couple of stitches here. And from the front I'm going to go underneath of the lips of one of the stitches. And I'm going to grab my twine and pull one of the ends through. And then I'm going to move to the next stitch over and again go from the front to the back and grab this and pull it through. Okay, then you're going to decide how long you want your loop to be. So whatever looks good. Then we're going to tie a little knot. And finally a little. But I'm not the world's best bot tire. Somehow. It just looks great way. I can't believe I got this lucky. But normally we would be all lopsided and totally uneven, but somehow I got lucky. So, you know, you can leave these as long or as short as you want. And you have a finished beautiful ornament. And you see what I mean, once you know what you're doing, you can just knock these out so fast. They are fantastic for that. In the next video, I'm going to show you how to customize the card before you print it. 6. Customize Your Card: I've got my computer here and I'm going to show you how quick and easy it is to add your own custom message to the card before you print it, you're going to need Acrobat Reader by Adobe. It's free PDF reading software that you probably already have. But in the off chance that you don't, I've got a link where you can download it for free in the project files along with the PDF that includes both the cheat sheet and the step-by-step for all of those with pictures, but also the printable templates. So you're going to want to open that up in Reader. And depending on your preferences and your version and all of that, you might see some kind of message like this about reading untag documents, just hit Cancel. And you should or may see the forms right here. So here we can see that the spot where you type your own message is highlighted. So if yours isn't highlighted, don't panic. It might just be your preferences or your current settings. Either way, you're gonna put your cursor in there and you can just type right over this. So it says your message here and we're going to replace that with With love from the Smiths. Ok. And you'll notice that this is appearing in a specific font. So I've actually embedded that into this whole PDF. So it should show up in this font. And then it's also weight. So you can read it on a black background. So then we can do the same thing down here. You can either type the same message or maybe you want to add a different one that just says, wishing you a warm holiday. Now it will tell you that this is limited to a single line of text. So for design integrity, I opted for that. So you can't write a novel here you got and keep it to one line of text. But hopefully that's not too difficult. All right? And then if you are maybe not wanting to use this much toner, if you're printing like on an inkjet or whatever, if you just have a different design aesthetic for design idea going on, you will also notice that if you scroll down, I have another version that is reversed. So you can do that as well. And then you would either just hit Print and send it to your home printer, or you could save the file, saved the PDF, and then send it to a print shop or wherever it is you want to have it printed. And then when you print it out, you'll just need to take some scissors and trim off the edges. Just trim off these white edges here. If you're doing the dark version or if you're doing this version here, then I put trim lines here for you. So it should be pretty simple, pretty straightforward. And like I said, if you, if your printer doesn't print on card stock like mine Dalit, you can cheat and print on regular paper and then glue stick it. That's what I did here and it works just fine. And then you just tape on your ornament. And you have something so special and so lovely and so handmade. And nobody has to know. It only took you a couple of minutes. 7. What Will You Make Next?: Nice job. I told you it would be simple and quick, right? I would love to see what you made. Share your finished project below for everyone to admire. And if you want some love on Instagram for your finished wreath, tag me at caplets image and use the hashtag crochet with Kara and I will definitely cheer you on. Thanks for joining me today. Be sure to check out my other beginner friendly crochet classes here on Skillshare. And I can't wait to see what you make next.