How to Decorate Xmas Wreaths

Customize a faux evergreen Christmas wreath with ornaments and ribbon.

The Christmas holidays present many decorating opportunities, but few offer as much creative leeway as the wreath. An undecorated Christmas wreath is a blank canvas that you can customize to your personal taste, your home's architecture or Christmas theme. For example, if you live in a Victorian home, you could cover a wreath with Christmas elements from that era such wide gold ribbon, open-bottomed bells and miniature violins. Bring your own artistic or decorating style to your wreath for a personalized Christmas decoration you'll want to keep for many holiday seasons.

Things You'll Need

• Green floral wire, 24-gauge
• Wire cutters
• Undecorated faux evergreen wreath
• Battery-operated Christmas lights, one strand
• Batteries for lights
• Greenery sprigs or sprays
• Wreath embellishments with pick ends
• Cinnamon sticks, bells, pinecones or similar winter items
• Christmas ornaments
• Garland
• Small Christmas decorations or toys
• Hot glue gun
• Hot glue sticks
• Ribbon or bows
• Aerosol artificial snow

Instructions

1. Turn on your Christmas lights to make sure they work properly. Replace any burned out bulbs and make sure batteries are working.

2. Cut about 8 inches of floral wire with your wire cutters. This should be enough to attach the lights' battery back to the back of the wreath. Hold the lights' battery pack behind the wreath and secure it with wire. Wrap the lights around the wreath by pulling them through the center, behind the wreath and back through the center again. Evenly space the bands of lights you're creating. Hide the wires inside the greenery as much as you can.

3. Fill in any thin places with greenery sprigs or sprays. Each piece should have a full top with a long, thin pick at the bottom. Stick the pick end of the sprig or spray into the wreath, and the wreath's frame or existing greenery will often hold it there. If the pick needs support, cut a length of floral wire to secure it further. Insert your other pick embellishments similarly.

4. Attach other elements with wire. Cut off about a foot of wire and insert it into a cinnamon stick; use the protruding wire ends to attach the stick. Wrap the bottom of a pinecone with wire, and then use loose wire ends to attach it to the wreath. String the wire through the tops of bells or Christmas ornaments to attach them.

5. Hot glue anything else you want to attach that doesn't doesn't have a place for wire, such as a small, snow-covered house. Also hot glue large bows and lengths of ribbons if they won't tie through the wreath. Spray your wreath with a light coat of faux snow (optional) for a wintry look.

Tips & Warnings

• Spray paint all your wreath decorating items gold or silver for an opulent metallic look. Group like items together, and place the main focal point off-center for maximum visual impact. When choosing items for your wreath, keep the wreath's scale in mind as well as your theme.

• Wreaths are in inexpensive, high-impact way to bring holiday cheer inside your home, too. Hang a wreath in the bathroom and decorate it with seasonal soaps skewered onto wreath picks, place a cookie-themed wreath in the kitchen or hang a large, opulent wreath over your fireplace or bed.

• Be careful with your glue gun. Its metal tip gets extremely hot.

References

• "At Home With Laurie Ann"; Laurie Ann McMillin Ray; 2010
• "Creative Floral Arranging: How to Decorate with Fresh, Dried & Silk Flowers"; Editors of Creative Publishing international; 1998
• "Decorate Your Home for Christmas"; Jana Wilson; 2002

Resources

• Country Living: Holiday Decorating Ideas