O Antiphon Poinsettia Wreath

Today was the last day of our weekly homeschooling get-togethers, making advent crafts and reading advent books.

It is MANY thanks to Kara, for designing this O Antiphon Wreath craft for us all, which will allow each family to showcase each day's O Antiphons which starts tomorrow (17th)

The wreath I worked on with my children is meant to represent the christmas flower, the poinsettia.

Kara bought paper plates for the wreath itself and the center was cut out. (The template for the stars were made out of the cardboard from the cut-out center.)

We went internet searching for some lovely O Antiphon images and we found some that were perfect for this craft....it came from Jenn's article over at Catholic Culture, excellent!!

The images were cut out and coloured in yellow.

Then they were stuck in the center of the white circles. The circles need to fit perfectly inside the the red stars you will see below.

Here are the circles with the images now glued on.

To give the centers the look of a poinsettia center, a single hole puncher was used to create a lovely edge.

Here are the stars, for each wreath you need 7 red and 7 green- above you can see the white cardboard star stencil.

Next the green and red stars needed to pinned together and then attached to the wreath. Special pins that fold back behind to attach them securely to the wreath were used.

Here is ds (14) flattening the pin at the back, securing the poinsettia flower to the wreath.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so we went outside for bettter light where the poinsettia flowers were all pinned to the wreath.

Each center had the English and Latin Antiphon written around the image.

Then the poinsettia centers were glued in the middle of each red flower, starting with "O Wisdom" going around until....

...they were all finished with the glueing of "O Emmanuel".

All the red petals were folded into the center like so.

A bow and curling ribbon is all that is needed now to finish the craft. Punch a hole with the hole punch just to the left of your 'O Wisdom' poinsettia flower.

After making the bow, the ribbon was threaded through the back of the bow.

The ribbon with the bow attached, is then threaded through the hole and tied at the back. The two long ribbon strands are tied together at the top to make a hanging loop.

All done, the children are now eager to count down the last remaining days of Advent with the opening of each poinsettia flower, the reading of the daily antiphon verse and the singing of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.