DIY Holiday Wreaths

This weekend we made our own holiday / Christmas wreaths!  I've never made a wreath before but was chatting about it with a friend and it sounded so fun and easy.  And, well, it was!!  After breakfast on Sunday, Bryan and I hopped on our bikes and embarked on a little foraging adventure around the neighborhood.  It was fun to cruise around with no real destination or purpose other than exploring the streets around where we live and clipping off the occasional straggler branch from wreath-resembling trees and bushes.

We got home and unloaded our loot onto the concrete table (with a tablecloth, of course... I'm a bit protective of the thing as I'm sure you can imagine).  I managed to find a couple of wire wreath forms in the craft closet, leftover from our succulent wreath days... okay, so I guess I have made my own wreath, but the technique and result was totally different >.<

The clippings we collected included redwood, ponderosa pine, coyote brush, pepper tree (complete with little red peppercorns), a couple types of juniper, and a handful of others that I don't know the names for.  If you want to make a wreath, don't worry about looking for specific plants.  I was worried that our wreaths wouldn't look Christmas-y without lots of pine, but it turned out that all of the different branches added their own fun texture and color to the mix.  There's really no going wrong.  Here is Marta with her awesome peppercorn wreath, and Alena's wreath which features almost all of the different clippings I collected, plus some red berries!

I also discovered that certain techniques worked better than others for actually creating the wreath.  I started off by trying to tie the branches onto the wreath form with floral wire, but this was very slow-going and wasn't doing much for me.  Instead of tying on each individual branch, I started weaving the branches through the wire form (see in the first photo how there are 4 metal circles connected at a couple points around the circumference).  This seemed to work really well and everything held in place.  Once you have a good base of greenery, then you can get into the fun part of sticking in more textured branches, berries, and anything else your heart desires!  Here's everyone with their finished wreaths on the staircase:

Overall this was a super fun project, and cost nothing!  Even if you don't have the wreath forms lying around, I'm pretty sure they cost something like $5 from Michael's.  I would love to keep this project going and make wreaths from other materials (eucalyptus, lavender, etc!) that I can display all year round.  But for now, Merry Christmas :)