DIY wreaths

Last weekend my Mom was having her staff over for a party and asked me to decorate the tables for her. I told her I would make it home-y by making wreaths, probably from the back yard.

While my little sister was sleeping, I got dressed and texted her to join me in the back when she got up. I found a wicker basket, some scissors and headed out with the puppy.

We have a variety of pines, and greens in the backyard so I started with the one I used to decorate the table at thanksgiving.

I decided to pick out the greens first, cutting snip-pits of the branches that were long and skinny rather than full. The reason for this is because the wreath I was planning on making was not much more than a foot in diameter and not much more than a dollar coin in thickness.

Tori came out and helped me snip some pieces to fill the basket. We picked twigs from 6″ to a foot and a half but the longer they get, they more flexible they need to be to bend for creating a circle.

I’m sorry we don’t have more pictures of us starting the process but your best bet is to take two that are bendable and make what looks like the shape of a lemon when you tie it together.

I used really small hemp yearn/string cut into pieces that were 4″ long. Some pieces you want to be a bit longer but thats really more for making the hemp stick out and show. Some people like that, some don’t. As you add the first twigs you want to begin to shape the circle. Once you have the circle set, you can add more than one piece and tie the hemp around multiple twigs.

I found it helpful to stick twigs in between other twigs to get them to stay, kind of like building a TP for the start of a fire. The twigs have to balance each-other out. In our backyard, we used both dry sticks (dead) and cut some live ones for the flexibleness. (I’m sorry to those of you green-ies who are offended by that!) Tori found some red twigs in the back and used those to color up the wreath.

In the end we sorted through the greens and chose ones to put in the wreath and without tying them in specifically; we just wove them into the other twigs.

We also thought it would be a nice touch to put the greens at the bottom of a vase with tea candles to add to the center table.

At another table we decided instead of the pine we collected, we bought rosemary and limes to put in mason jars. We slices two limes into wheels and put 2 rosemary bunches in each of 3 jars, filled them with chilled water and set white tea lights on top.

Feel free to email with questions! I love crafting and helping others to enjoy the art of making things from scratch.