A Wreath for the Season

This year's selection of holiday wreaths was underwhelming.  There were plain evergreen wreaths.  Wreaths with red bows.  Wreaths made out of ornaments and garland.  Wreaths decorated with fake berries.  Fake evergreen wreaths wired with white lights.  Some even come covered in fake snow.  And for all those options I really saw nothing that I liked.

Instead of settling, inspiration struck!  There was a very pretty garland with beads and snowflakes languishing next to a plain artificial 15 inch evergreen wreath.  I could see a beautiful wreath taking shape in my mind.  This year's door decoration was going to be fashioned by your truly!

First step: Gather the materials.  I bought a 15 inch artificial wreath, two 5 foot strands of beaded garland, 4 colorful jingle bells and 100 feet of color ribbon.  The ribbon has wires in the edges to help the resulting bow hold its shape.  And only about 3 - 4 feet of it were actually used in the making of my wreath.  Not shown are 6 wire ornament hangers; paper clips would do the trick too.

String the garland through out the wreath.  I try to make it look pretty random.  Enough slack was left in it to allow repositioning once it was hanging on the door.  The wreath also start looking better after a bit of fluffing and repositioning the branches.

Next step - attach the bells.  I took the ornament hangers and used one to attach each bell.   They could also be attached with twist ties or a bit of string.  The wires were wrapped multiple times around the branches to keep the bells from working themselves loose.

Last but far from least, the bow was fashioned.  I make a few attempts at this before I was happy.  The nice thing about having wire in the ribbon is that the bow can be reshaped until I am happy with it.   Also the knot in the center is pretty loose, but the bow isn't going to come undone because of the wire.  Once I had a bow I was happy with, I twisted two ornament hangers together, threaded them through the back of the bow and attached the bow were I wanted it on the wreath.

Within 20 minutes I have a unique holiday wreath!  The part I like best is that I can refashion this wreath however I see fit.  If I get tired of the teal ribbon (just an example - it is highly unlikely I will get tired of the teal ribbon), I can swap in a purple one.  If the garland fades in the weather?  New garland!  Hopefully this wreath will last me through the winter, but I'm thrilled with my first wreath making attempt.  I hope you enjoy as well!