DIY Christmas Hoop Wreath - My Sister's Suitcase

Create an entire Christmas village out of paper using the Cricut Maker, and display it on a beautiful DIY wooden hoop wreath with shelves. This simple DIY Christmas wreath is a wonderful holiday decoration you can reuse year after year! Hang it above your mantel, a shelf, or over a door to make a colorful statement in your holiday decor this year.

I am a little bit obsessed with hoop wreaths, and I knew I wanted to create a holiday version for my fireplace mantel this year. I found a huge wooden embroidery hoop and had the idea to create a Christmas Village within the wreath. I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to do it, and then I was bouncing ideas off of my friend Kim and she had the idea to add a few shelves inside the wreath. Genius!! I started looking in Design Space and I found the perfect set of Cricut cut files that has these adorable miniature houses and buildings. The tutorial is so simple, I can’t wait to share it with you!

How To Make a Christmas Village Hoop Wreath

Materials:

Large Wooden Hoop – I used a 23″ embroidery hoop from Hobby Lobby
2 pieces of bass wood (4″x24″)
Cricut Maker
Cricut cardstock in various colors (Antiquity and Holiday Sampler)
Cricut scoring wheel
Cricut Standard grip mat
hot glue gun

Creating a Paper Christmas Village

The inspiration for my Christmas Village began with these beautiful colors of cardstock from Cricut! I used the Antiquity Cardstock pack and some colors from the Holiday Sampler pack. I used a lot of white, and mixed in some traditional and non-traditional Christmas colors to give my village a cheery, Scandinavian vibe.

And of course, this entire project would not be possible without the Cricut Scoring Wheel. The Scoring Wheel is one of the tools that is exclusive to the Cricut Maker, another powerful tool that opens up so many crafting possibilities! The scoring wheel made it possible to create these little houses with extreme precision by making flawless, deep score lines before the cuts. The scoring made it so easy to fold and assemble the paper houses. I had never used it on a project of this scale, but the results were amazing. I never could have made this paper village without utilizing the scoring wheel and my Cricut Maker.

You will start making your paper Christmas village by selecting the building cut files you want to use in Design Space. The set of buildings and houses I used is part of the Winter Woodland images. There are several different styles of houses and buildings in the set. I learned through trial and error that it is best to cut each building separately, rather than try to combine files together and cut all of the red pieces together, all of the white pieces, etc. It is much easier to do one house at a time, so you can easily identify the components and assemble it.

Here are the Design Space cut files I created for my village:

Now, for the actual process of making these amazing paper houses. The cut files are all ready to go, so all you need to do is click on the file in Design Space and get the coordinating colors of cardstock ready to cut on your Light Grip mat. The only tedious part of this entire process is when you will need to switch out the scoring wheel and fine point blade on your Maker in between scoring and cutting. You will get faster! Just watch a few Hallmark Christmas movies while you are cutting and scoring, and the time will go faster!

How to Score, Cut, and assemble a paper house

Here is what will come up in Design Space when you click on one of the links listed above, this one is the White house with the gray roof.

Click on “Make It,” and it will prompt you to cut one color at a time. You will always start with the Scoring Wheel first, which it will also prompt you to load on the next screen where it says “Load Scoring Wheel in Clamp B”:

Once the scoring is done, you don’t unload your mat! You will be immediately prompted to switch out the Scoring Wheel for the fine point blade. Then hit the “go” button and it will make the cut. It’s important to note that you will be switching these tools back and forth for each color of cardstock you cut in the design.

When the cuts are finished, carefully take each piece off the Light Grip mat and plug in your hot glue gun to get ready to assemble the house. I liked to assemble the house while my next building was cutting. Here are the main pieces required for this house:

Start with the inner piece of the house, in this case, the light blue piece. Using the score lines, create folds along each line. Then, you will use a lo-temp hot glue gun to attach the edges together to create the inner house shape.

You will then wrap the outside house piece (the white one) around the inner piece (blue one) and glue that piece along the small tab as pictured above. Now that the base of the house is complete, you will attach the roof with hot glue. If there are any little extras like a door, you will add that on now.

That’s it! One house done, many more to go!

It took me a few days, working during naps and at night to get all of my houses cut out and assembled. I watched a lot of Netflix! But the end result is SO worth it. These little houses will be used for years to come, and since I didn’t permanently attach them to the shelves of my hoop wreath, I can store them easily. You could even tuck them into your Christmas tree branches and use them as ornaments! But I love how they look on the shelves of my wreath. Now I’m going to show you how I made this DIY hoop wreath with shelves.

How to make a DIY Hoop Wreath with Shelves

Start by measuring the inner wooden hoop to figure out the width you will need to make your shelves.

Trim the end of the bass wood to the size you will need your shelves. For my first shelf I trimmed it to 18″ long, using my Cricut TrueControl knife.

After both pieces are cut to the correct size, lay your hoop down on the ground and make sure you know where each shelf will fit inside the hoop.

Attach the shelves to the sides of the hoop with hi-temp hot glue.

Now that your hoop shelves are complete, you can start arranging the houses on the shelves to create your Christmas village! I tried to make sure I had a good mix of buildings and roofs, so they look varied and not the same colors right next to each other.

Now on to the last part of my project, adding some winter greenery to the top of the wreath. You’ll never guess what these pine needles are made of…
They are PAPER too! You can use this pine needle cut file in Design Space and resize it for your needs. I made a small and medium size file so the needles would have a little bit of variation and look more natural.

Making Paper Pine Needles with the Cricut Maker

Materials:

Cricut cardstock in green (from the Holiday Sampler)
Cricut Light Grip mat
Cricut Maker
Cricut Design Space pine needle cut file (medium)
Cricut Design Space pine needle cut file (small)
hot glue gun

The pine needles are so easy to put together! (Which was a nice break after doing all my houses!) Just cut them out of light to medium cardstock, carefully peel off your Light Grip mat, and then roll up, starting with the longer needle end. There is a little extra length on the tab at the bottom of the needle so you can glue it together when you are finishing rolling. Here’s what all my needles looked like after I glued them together:

I started in the center of the top of the hoop and started gluing the needles outward (as naturally as possible!) The result was so much better than I ever imagined.

I tied some of my favorite ribbon around the center of wreath and hung it on the wall above my fireplace mantel. Then it was time to add the houses!!!