
Final effect – mostly matching wreaths and a couple light up topiaries from Lowes – at least the door is ready for the holidays!
I am not really the Martha Stewart type, but after searching online for ages for a couple of front door christmas wreaths I realized I was going to have to take the matter into my own hands….
I had no idea wreaths were so bloody expensive if you want something a bit more stylish that a couple fake pine cones and some red ribbon! You can either order some freshly made, eucalyptus and pine fronds transported lovingly by horse drawn carriage from Maine’s deepest, evergreen forests for an arm and a leg or you can get the fake “designer” kinds that cost eleventy billion dollars. I needed two for my front doors and unless I was willing to sell my kid for medical experiments I couldn’t justify the cost.
I checked all my usual low cost places – Target, Home goods – even Lowes and saw nothing that I liked. Finally I just decided It can’t be that hard to make your own.
I found a couple battery operated large green wreaths with nothing more than some clear LED lights at Lowes to use as the base. Then I headed over to Michaels – the mecca of crafty housewives and pot pourri to look for some attractive glittery stuff to glue on
They have a sea of glittery leaves, berries, fake fruit, flowers – you name it! I hit up the 50% off sale items first and then picked a few other full price things too. I dropped abut $60 on a selection of mostly silver, gold and white leafy stuff because I thought that would look best against my newly painted red doors.
When I got home I started pulling them apart. These things are made up up of a lot of smaller pieces on wires that are artfully arranged and then wrapped with paper to create one larger branch like thing. I am trying to imagine that being a job someone has somewhere LOL – you would be constantly covered in glitter!
All you have to do is strip away the paper and you get 5 or 7 smaller pieces for the price of one. I enlisted my teen to help me break it all up then I split my glittery treasure trove in half so that I didn’t go overboard on one wreath and not have enough for the second. I laid all the pieces out on the dining room table beside the first wreath and got to work.
It’s really not that difficult – start with some of the larger pieces and jam them in – then you can twist the wires around the wireframe of the base wreath to attach. I had a glue gun but honestly I didn’t use it much – the twisted wire held just fine. I used a couple larger pieces to anchor the bottom and then a sliver flower to offset the top. Then work around the wreath adding and layering more to your hearts content.
If you are worried about not having a good vision of what you want just keep an inspiration photo handy to refer to. I knew I wanted that winterberry look, instead of holiday baubles so I just kept adding little branches that stuck out around the edges until I was happy with the overall effect.
Of course after I finished one, I had to do it all over again – so my fingers were a little sore and scraped up from all the wire twisting. It was worth it though, nothing fell off when I hung them on the doors and I think they look pretty good – expensive designer look on the cheap and they are unique – nothing exactly like them anywhere else LOL