I wanted a wreath for our front door this year that would really stand out. Since our door is very white I thought red would be the color to use to make the wreath really “pop”.
You will need: Grapevine wreath, Red berry garland, Mini jingle bell garland, floral mini lights or Christmas lights, Gold-colored floral wire, Cinnamon scented pine cones, Dried red Yarrow, Red “rattails”, Red curly Ting-Ting, and Dried red grass seed-heads. Helpful tools to have are needle-nose pliers and wire snips.
The materials for this wreath cost me $40.00, but unlike the green wreath I usually make every year from the bottom branches of my Christmas tree, I will be able to reuse this wreath for a couple of years. With the way I put it together, even if some of the dried floral material gets a little “ratty-looking” from storage I will be able to take that material off and replace it.
The first thing I did with my materials was to remove them from their wrappers and lay them out. The next thing was to unwrap the berry garland very carefully as the “berries” are on very thin wire and can fall off quite easily — the same goes for the tiny jingle bell garland — you will lose some of the berries no matter how careful you are, but in the end the few that end up falling off will not be that noticeable.
Next, I took my grapevine wreath and laid the berry garland on top of it in a circular fashion. Then I snipped lengths of the floral wire to use as twist ties to fasten the garland to the wreath. I did the same with the bell garland. Be sure that when clipping off pieces of the floral wire to use as twist ties you cut them long enough to be able to work with them. You can always go back later when you are satisfied with the placement to trim the ends.
After I fastened my garlands in place I took my dried florals and began making bunches of them which I wrapped with the floral wire. I then cut the bunches to length to fit my wreath.
I began with the Yarrow at about 12 O’clock on the wreath then went around clockwise with the other foliage fastening the bunches in place. You can see how I did this in the image of the wreath above.
The next thing I did was to take my scented pine cones and loop and twist the floral wire around them. I made sure to use enough floral wire to go around the pine cone and leave enough left over length so that I could fasten it to the wreath. I went back to snip off the excess wire after I placed all of my pine cones where I wanted them to be. Depending on how I placed the pine cones I either looped around the middle of the cone or closer near the wider end of it. Middle looped cones were attached sideways while end looped cones sort of sat-up or pointed outward from the wreath.
After tying my pine cones in place I inserted my floral lights at considerate intervals around the wreath. You may want to use twinkle lights, but I preferred to use battery operated floral lights of the type used in bridal bouquets. The reason for this is that I wanted only a touch of ambient lighting behind the wreath and did not want to overwhelm it with Christmas lights.
My next to last step was to “fluff-out” the berry and bell garland. Basically I just lifted and pulled strands outward toward the front of the wreath to give it some dimension. You may want to tie a hanging loop on to the back of your wreath, I did not because I am using a door wreath hanger which does not need a loop on the back of the wreath to hang it.
I hope you enjoyed learning how I made my wreath and that I have given you some ideas on how to make your own!
