Festive Wreaths

There is nothing more welcoming than seeing a Christmas Wreath adorning a front door, but they can be quite expensive to purchase, especially those made of fresh items.

You might be surprised at how easy it is to make a wreath from scratch at home, you will find you have a lot of things at home that can help you, and a few things you need can be bought at a craft shop/florist.

Many garden centres offer wreath making classes at this time of year, so it is worth looking into if you need a bit more of a hands-on guide.

Things you will need:

Wire Wreath Hoop – Hobbycraft sell a 30.5cm frame for £2.

Pruning snips – whatever you normally use for gardening.

Florist wire – Hobbycraft sell green hobby wire in packs, 25cm for 60p.

Greenery – you might have something growing in your garden that you could prune for the purpose, like a boxwood. Often Christmas tree sellers will sell off branches or even give away broken pieces, such as fir, spruce or holly. Other good greens are juniper, cedar and pine.

Decorations – Berries, such as Hypericum, dried fruit, twigs, cinnamon sticks, star anise, nuts, seed pods, pinecones, mistletoe, and Christmas ornaments.

Before you start:

Ideally you need to soak your greenery. Start by cutting the stems at a 45-degree angle, then place them in room temperature water for a few hours.

Depending on the size of your wreath, you will probably need to cut your greenery to 6-12 inches long per piece.

Decide on the size of your wreath, remember that due to the greenery denseness your wreath will end up being several inches larger than your hoop size.

Build your wreath

Lay the hoop flat on a surface you can work on (protect your table if needs be).

Place pieces of the greenery into the hoop, and secure with the florist’s wire, place each new stem halfway under the one before, until the whole surface is covered. Bend, tie and prune as needed to get a good shape. You will probably need 8-10 boughs of greenery to fill a 30cm hoop.

Then decorate the wreath with your natural elements, again secure with florist’s wire, or more delicate items could be secured with a glue gun if you happened to have one at home.

Lastly, secure a fastening at the back with ribbon or florist wire, so that you can hang it on the door.

In cold weather, away from direct sunlight the wreath should last 4 weeks, it is helpful if you mist it with water every other day to keep the greenery looking fresh.

 

Written by: I4C_Blog_Admin

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