Natural wreaths

Following on from my last post showing how we made the wreath bases, I promised to add a few photos when we had finished decorating them. We prefer the natural look and usually prune a little overgrown greenery from our gardens to decorate with, which has the added bonus of being completely free.

This is our front door wreath, as you can see it has a completely green and natural look. I have used clippings from holly, ivy, pine and added a few pinecones. Some twigs have just been woven straight into the twig ring bases and some things, mainly the pinecones, have been wired on to hold them still.

I have also made a few very simple ones to add to the back of some of our internal doors, as you can see I have woven in a small piece of pine and stuck a couple of pinecones on with a hot glue gun. I'm not sure yet whether to add a little snow spray.

These ring bases can be decorated as elaborate or as simply as you choose and the bases can be kept and used year after year with a new decor each time. Very simple, very quick and very thrifty.

Altered Wreath

Just a quick post to show you our door wreath, I brought the one below locally for just one pound 7 or 8 years ago, and for a couple of years we just hung it as it is with no alterations. 

But for the last few years we have been altering it quite a bit using the original wreath as a starter point. We have quite a large amount of overgrown ivy at the bottom of the garden, which comes in handy at this time of year for the decorations, the holly is also from a little bush by our front door and the pine cones collected from some of our many nature walks.

The ivy is very easy to intertwine through the twigs of the original wreath, I used some copper wire to fix a couple of pieces in place and for the pine cones. We have also added some hawthorn berries for extra colour, I really love these natural looking wreaths at the moment and because we have decorated it ourselves it can be made exactly the way we like it. My daughter helped me to collect the plants from our garden today, (well mostly she ran off with the trug) so it will hopefully add to the lovely family memories we have of the season.