How to Make a Valentine Wreath

Use this wreath as a centerpiece for a romantic Valentine's Day supper or hang it on your door to welcome guests into your home. Flowers - combined with greens harvested from your garden - stay fresh in their own reservoirs of water.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Wire Wreath Frame
• Flowers
• Garden Shears
• Garden Trimmings
• Roses
• Tapered Candles
• Votive Candles
• Valentine Candies
• Water Pick
• Paddle Wire

1. Purchase roses from a flower shop or cut them from your garden if they are already blooming. Store them in a bucket filled with water until you are ready to use them.

2. Gather a large shopping bag full of 6-inch garden trimmings. Some suggested trimmings are magnolia, oak, nandina, asparagus fern or raphiolepis. The tip ends of the branches work best.

3. Use a wire wreath frame or make your own from a wire coat hanger. (Simply unbend it into a circle - you can use the hook to hang your finished wreath.)

4. 
    

   Attach #24 floral wire (sometimes called paddle wire) anywhere along the wire wreath frame.  

5. Select several stems of the 6-inch foliage pieces and place them together in a bunch with the stems at one end.

6. Place this bundle on top of the frame where the floral wire is connected.

7. 
    

   Hold the bundle in place and wrap the floral wire around the bundle and frame. You will need two hands for this: one to hold the bundle in place against the frame and one to wrap the wire.

8. Wrap the floral wire around the bundle a second time and then pull it tight. Make sure to leave the wire attached to the frame - you still have a long way to go.  

9. Gather another bundle of foliage and place it so that the leaves overlap the first bunch and cover the stems. Make sure that the stems on both bunches face the same direction.

10. 
     

    Cut the stems of the roses to about 4 to 6 inches. Insert one or more roses into a water pick filled with water.

11. 
     

    Place the prepared rose onto the last bundle and wrap the wire around the plastic pick.  

12. Continue overlapping the bunches of foliage and prepared roses and wiring them to the frame until you complete the circle.

13. Lift the first bundle that you wired onto the frame and tuck the last bundle under it.  

14. 
     

    Twist the wire tightly around the last bundle. Knot the wire onto the frame, leaving an inch of wire with which to hang the finished wreath.

15. 
     

    Cut the wire with scissors or pruning shears when you're finished. Hang and enjoy!

Tips & Warnings

• If you are lucky enough to have somebody send you roses from the florist, save the water picks for use in projects like this. Otherwise, they are available at craft stores.
• Use any type of fresh flower you desire; orchids are very exotic, but daisies look just as nice for a lot less money.
• Place tapers or votive candles in the center of the wreath for a striking centerpiece.
• Add colorful valentine candy to your wreath by twisting paddle wire around the candy wrappers. Twist onto the foliage.