Kidnap the Magic: Small World Promenade Holiday Wreath

One of the most distinctive holiday decorating schemes at Disneyland can be found on the Small World Promenade. While Chester* rocks his Santa hat and colored lights, fourteen white wreaths themed to different countries and regions as depicted on the ride line the walkway, building anticipation via their familiar central insignia and “supporting casts” of witty ornaments.

I don't know who in Imagineering is responsible for this...but I like it! So much so that several years ago, I made a set of tree ornaments based on the wreaths, using snowflakes as the base (since I couldn't find white mini-wreaths at an economical price) and variously shaped sequins for the ornaments. But this is Kidnap the Magic, and I'm going to offer you a more ambitious project: An actual wreath decorated the same way as the ones in the park, scaled down just enough to fit comfortably in the average home.

Materials

To make this project you will need:

1. A white wreath with lights built-in. This one is quite nice and comes in a variety of sizes. 20 or 24 inches diameter should be about right for home use.
2. White foam board.
3. Sticker paper (and access to a color printer).
4. A sturdy X-Acto or other craft knife.
5. Optional: Glitter glue or tacky craft glue with dry glitter (our example uses iridescent aqua).
6. Ornaments and embellishments to go with your central insignia. I normally don't like “shatterproof” Christmas ornaments—I think metallic finishes look tacky on plastic—but this is one project where it's very helpful to know you won't bust up an ornament by squeezing it too hard.
7. 2-inch satin ribbon or—in our example case—artificial seaweed.

Instructions

First...decide which of the fourteen wreaths you want to recreate. Do this before you even start shopping for materials, because it will determine the specifics of what you need to get—the colors and shapes of your ornaments and the color(s) of your ribbon. You might like to honor your own country, your favorite country on the ride, or a country you particularly admire...or just one where you like the colors. For the example, we're going to use the Undersea wreath, which is nice and politically neutral:

Next, you'll need to make your central icon. When I made my snowflake ornaments, I took some high-res photos of all fourteen wreaths and used them as templates, carefully tracing over the icons in a graphics program until I had some clean-lined flat-colored images suitable for printing. Here's our tropical fish after said treatment:**

Save the image and adjust it to a size that will fit snugly in the inside of your wreath. You'll actually want it slightly larger than the interior diameter, so that projecting bits like the fins can be anchored in the needles and hold the whole thing in place without the need for wires or glue.

Print the fish on sticker paper, paste it to your foam board, and cut it out with the craft knife. Go slowly during the cutting portion so that you follow the curves of the fins neatly and don't slice anything you don't want to (such as your finger).

As an optional embellishment, go over the light aqua portions of the fish image—its eyes and some of its scales—with iridescent aqua glitter. If you used a laser printer to print the fish, you can use glitter glue; otherwise, tacky glue sprinkled with dry glitter has less of a risk of the ink absorbing moisture and running. Consider making a small test print first to try different options and see what gives the best results.

Finish off the symbol by adding some strands of ribbon in appropriate colors to the bottom. The actual wreaths don't use real ribbon, but some sort of sculpted material that holds up better in outdoor conditions. Actual ribbon is fine for home use, though. It should be about two inches wide, and you might want to get the kind with little wires in it so it will hold an interesting furled shape, depending on which wreath you're making.

For the fish, of course, ideally you'll be able to find artificial seaweed. Look in aquarium supply shops and floral craft stores for some sturdy fronds. Failing that, you can use ribbon after all—get a bright green one with ruffles along both edges. Whatever you end up using, choose or cut three or four pieces of different lengths and glue one end of each to the back of the symbol so that it trails from the bottom.

Now for the best part—dressing the wreath up with themed ornaments! You can have a lot of fun with this, choosing colors and shapes that remind you of the country you're representing. Be creative and don't let yourself get locked into literal interpretations—examine the above photo of the fishy wreath and you'll notice plenty of fish and sea shells, but also stars (representing starfish without exactly being them), Hawaiian shirts, and semi-abstract shapes reminiscent of coral and glass sponges. Those dangly things with the teardrop beads on the ends could be construed as jellyfish tentacles, and I think there's even one or two model sailboats in there. The round ornaments are in light shades of blue and green, and are mostly transparent or iridescent or both, evoking bubbles and/or fish scales. Any of these concepts would be suitable for your home version...as would anything else that reminds you of the ocean.

The same principle applies to the other wreaths, should you choose to go one of those routes instead. Don't worry about imitating the ones in the park exactly—even if you could, it wouldn't stick because the wreaths have changed slightly over the years, as ornaments gradually wear out or get broken and have to be replaced with different ones.

All the same, you can follow the Imagineers' lead in another way by arranging your ornaments with a sense of composition. The original wreaths do not have their ornaments spread uniformly throughout; instead, certain types are clustered for artistic effect. Dangling ornaments such as tassels and strings of beads tend to be grouped near the bottom of the wreath so that they may hang freely, while those with a “sprouting” appearance are located near the top. On our example wreath, the fish-shaped ornaments all face the same direction as the central one, as if they were schooling together. There's a logic to it, and if you apply the same sort of logic to your own wreath—whichever country you choose—it will look nicer than if you haphazardly scatter your decorations around it.

And that's it! Hang your wreath up and admire! Don't forget to turn on the lights when it gets dark out!

Advanced Course

Of course, if you want a real challenge—and have a bit of design skill yourself—you might try expanding on the concept with a wreath representing a country not addressed by the fourteen on the Promenade. For the most part, this will work just like recreating one of the existing ones...the only difference is that you have to start by designing the central icon for yourself. You don't have to copy an image from the ride verbatim, but use a friendly-looking cartoon style and a bold, simple color palette. Here are some suggestions:

• Ireland: For the central icon, use a leprechaun or a lovely Irish harp. The dominant colors should be green and gold, with maybe a little orange thrown in there to mollify the Protestants.*** As for shapes, more harps are certainly appropriate—and not at all difficult to find in ornament form—but the Ireland set on the ride is wall-to-wall shamrocks, so make sure you have plenty of those! Also look for ornaments featuring Celtic knotwork, fiddles, flutes, and maybe a rainbow or two.
• India: If I have one substantial complaint about “it's a small world” Holiday, it's that it's not quite multicultural enough—too much Christmas, even in countries where that's not the most popular winter or light-focused holiday. So if I were to design a wreath to represent India, the central icon would be a Diwali lamp. For colors, I would go with magenta, orange, and teal accented with gold, and shapes would include elephants, peacocks and peacock feathers, tigers, brass bells and cymbals, and lotus blossoms.
• Egypt: What better icon to use than “it's a small world”'s own version of the Great Sphinx? (You might consider adding a smile, though.) The colors I always associate with Egypt are gold, bronze, turquoise, and cobalt blue. Good ornaments to use include pyramids, palm trees, camels (easy to find due to the Nativity pageant connection), heavy tassels, and multi-pointed stars like those featured over the Egypt scene on the ride.
• Australia: I think a boomerang lavishly painted with Aboriginal designs would be the ideal icon here. Colors should be warm and earthy—reds, browns, tawny golds, and maybe black. Appropriate ornament shapes include kangaroos and koalas, naturally, but also smaller boomerangs, surfboards, sharks, and abstract sun images.

Of course, these are just my ideas. If you want to take the plunge and try putting together a completely original wreath, surely it's because you have ideas of your own. Make sure to show me some nice photos when it's done!

In fact...I'd like to see photos of any projects you undertake as a result of being inspired by my Kidnap the Magic posts. We can form a Magic-Kidnapping ring!

* For those readers who might be new to this blog, the Clock Tower is nicknamed Chester. Per the Cast Members on the ride.

** If you'd like to do a different wreath, let me know and I'll be happy to forward you the corresponding image.

*** My own ancestors were Irish Protestants. I'm allowed.