Tips For Making An Ornament Centerpiece

One of the things I decided to try this Christmas when I had lots

of unused silver ornaments was an ornament centerpiece on the

dining room table. I could find pictures of centerpieces using

ornaments but no real instructions. This post shares some tips

I learned through trial and error (lots of error!) in case someday

you would like to give one a try yourself. 

A couple of things to keep in mind...

#1 Ornaments roll around a lot on a flat surface

Sure I knew round ornaments would roll but even the odd shaped

ornaments were very hard to keep where I placed them. Even

when I thought I had them steady, any jiggle to the table would 

send them in all directions. 

#2 Ornaments do not like to support the weight of other

ornaments no matter how light they are. 

There is no stacking of ornaments unless they are forced to

hold up even smaller ornaments. The bottom ornaments just 

roll to the side if any others are placed on top of them. 

Even when I tried the centerpiece on a tablecloth instead

of a bare table, the same things happened. 

To combat these natural tendencies of ornaments I found myself

using two main forces...containment and forced togetherness.

Containment would be a bowl or a tray with an edge to not

give the ornaments a choice about rolling away and then they

have to support the ornaments that are placed on top of them.

Forced togetherness is using wire, ribbon or fishing line to tie

ornaments together by their hangers so they cannot get away 

from each other. When you tie enough of them together you 

can build up some dimension and height. 

Here is what I started with in my Christmas decoration of the 

dining room...

Not all of these ornaments were used on the centerpiece.

I used a round silver tray as the middle of the centerpiece. The lip

on the tray contained the ornaments and kept them from rolling

around. A bowl would be an even better containment device since

the sides are higher but I don't have a silver one. 

A good tip whether you use a tray or bowl is to put your least

favorite or most ordinary ornaments on the bottom of the pile

so that your best ornaments will be easily seen. Also you can

fill in blank spaces in the pile with smaller ornaments. A bowl 
or tray of ornaments is lovely as a centerpiece. If you are happy
with how it looks on your table...bam! you are done!

With either a tray or a bowl pick it up very gently if/when you 

have to move it to not disturb your careful stacking. There is a 
limit to the amount of ornaments you can safely put in a bowl
or on a tray, of course, before they decide to tumble. 

After a lot of frustration in making the ornaments on the sides 

of the tray stay where I wanted them, I tried wiring the 

ornaments together using their hangers and silver wire.

This did help to keep them together and not roll but they flop

away from each other as much as possible. 

I added more ornaments to the original three...

...that was better but still left a big space in the middle.

I kept wiring on more ornaments to the bunch.

I finally felt like I was making progress with the wiring and made

several more bunches similar to the first. This is an example

of the forced togetherness.

It's interesting that the cheapest ornaments were the easiest to

make stay in place because they only had small holes in their

hangers and could not flop away like the ornaments with a 

traditional wire hanger with room to roam.

I thought that once I got the ornament bunches made that it 

would be easy to place them in the pattern I wanted...but, no.

When I tried to place a third bunch of ornaments in the middle

 and slightly on top of the two side bunches, the side bunches

 just slid to the sides of the third bunch. I was wanting the 

design to taper so I experimented some more.

To force the two side bunches to not slide apart I also wired

them together.

With another piece of wire I added the third bunch in the

position that I wanted it between the other two.

Another good advantage of having the ornaments not on the tray wired together is that they did not budge if the table was wiggled
or bumped. Also when I needed to move the centerpiece for any reason it was in three main pieces and did not need rebuilding. 

I gave up on having all the ornaments wired together when

I realized that with the main side structures stable, I could 

add a few small ornaments to fill in blank spaces along the

sides and they were contained by the bigger ornaments. 

Arrows show where non-wired ornaments were placed. 

At night the centerpiece  looked sparkly and warm with
 small clear glass votive candles lit and tucked around it.

The centerpiece was not exactly what I had in mind when I 

started but it turned out to function well in that guests could

see over the centerpiece and it was not so big that it interfered  

with dinnerware like glasses and plates on the table. 

I hope these tips will help you not have the frustrations that

I did when you try an ornament centerpiece. 

To see how the centerpiece tied in to the other decorations

in the dining room, please click on the highlighted text below.

Christmas Home Tour 2018

Even though this is not a complete tablescape I am sharing
this page over at this blog party
Tablescape Thursday @ Between Naps On The Porch