DIY Wreath

Assorted shrubbery from Grandad

This was my first ever attempt at making a wreath for Christmas and I am so pleased with how well it turned out! It cost me exactly nothing to make; everything was either lying around our house or garden (well most of it was from Nana and Grandad's garden!) and hopefully will make our home look nice and Christmassy when I eventually figure out how to hang it on the front door. 

Grandad arrived bearing gifts of conifer, holly and some shrub with red berries, and he had also knocked up a wreath base using some insulation tubing - I have still to turn this into a wreath but plan to do so shortly as I have loads of greenery still to use.

Our two wreath bases: insulation tubing on left and coat hanger & hanging basket liner on right

Poppet had already seen a picture of a wreath in a Christmas story book we had been reading her and asked "What's that?" so she had a rough idea of what they looked like but she liked seeing one appear before her eyes! I started off by bending a wire coat hanger into a circle with Poppet's help, leaving the hook intact so we could use it to hang the wreath up when it was finished. I had an old hanging basket liner that I tore roughly into three pieces and then wrapped around the coat hanger, securing it on by wrapping twine round it.

Together we then attached bits of conifer all the way round the wreath, just by pushing the end under a bit of the twine. We kept doing this until we had quite a good layer of conifer built up, Poppet was really good at this bit!

I was surprised at how long she was able to concentrate on it, I didn't need to try and keep her interested she just wanted to help.

After the conifer we had a search around the garden to see what other greenery we could turn up, and came back with some rosemary sprigs that we tucked into the wreath as well. Poppet kept coming back with little sprigs of weeds saying 'Here's some thyme!' (a herb she knows well because she has some in her garden) but I managed to avoid having to put any weeds into the wreath!

Wreath in progress

I then started adding pieces of holly and red berries and this is where the swearing started as I kept spiking myself on the holly. Understandably Poppet was from this point onwards reluctant to help attach the greenery and preferred to have a more background role just observing "Watch the spiky bit mum!"

I had sprayed our pine cones gold and scented them with cinnamon oil so Poppet loved taking them out the bag and sniffing them. We tied a few pine cones to the wreath as a finishing touch and declared it "all done!"