I have been itching to do something festive all holiday season and one day, I decided I was going to forage the woodland for materials to make myself a custom wreath. I was inspired by the holly bushes and trees and what looks like a winterberry bush (although I am not 100% certain that’s what it is, but it looks VERY similar) that grow along our house.
There’s also a woodland in our neighborhood that has viney plants and several evergreen trees that grow along the perimeter of the neighborhood.
The first thing I needed was a vined plant or willow that I could turn into a wreath circle. Lucky for me, there were vines growing up one of the huge oak trees in the woodland. I snipped some off about 10 feet long and set out to trim some branches of evergreen. I wanted to be sure to spread where I was snipping them from so that it wasn’t obvious. I wanted to make sure things looked as if they were untouched. I trimmed about 6 branches and headed home.
The first thing I did was make a circle with the vine and secure it together with floristry wire. The vine circle ended up about 12 inches in diameter.
Next, I trimmed the branches into smaller pieces about 6-8 inches long. Once all branches were trimmed, I secured 5-6 pieces of the evergreen together into a bunch using floristry wire.
Once I had all my bunches complete, I secured them to my wreath circle, alternating their placement front and back to give the illusion of more fullness. While that was exactly what I was going for, I ended up not having enough bunches of evergreen, so I had to go back out and trim a few more branches.
After all my branch bunches were secured to the wreath circle, I went out and snipped some winterberry branches and holly branches. Then I placed them loosely around the wreath to get a feel for where I wanted to place them. Once I was confident in my placing, I secured bundles of winterberry and holly together with floristry wire and attached them to the wreath circle.
The final touch was a beautiful bow. I went into my ribbon stash and made a bow out of glittery red ribbon and attached it to the wreath with floristry wire.
And here’s the final product:
I am so pleased with how it turned out and think it is absolutely gorgeous.
Chad has been spritzing it with water daily to keep the greens fresh. It’s holding up quite nicely and I’m very proud of my work.
I’m going to make it a holiday tradition from here on out because I had so much fun doing it.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
