WAYWO: Making Ornamental Wreaths

This is my first diary in DK5, so hopefully this will work.  

Once upon a time my husband and I purchased commercial, predone wreaths. They cost $35 — $45. In the last few years we been making our own and they are much nicer and a cheaper. I apologize for not having more pictures of the process, but I wasn’t sure what diary I was going to do tonight so we did the wreaths before I decided this was the diary I wanted to write.

When I deliberately use the plural “wreaths”, because each year we do 3 wreaths: one for our door, one for my mother and one for my father. My parents wreaths are for the cemetery where they are buried.  You can see that 3 wreaths at an average cost of $40, it adds up and besides they are so very generic. No personality or personalization. So here is what we do.

We purchase a plain wreath at a grocery store or any other location — a wreath that is just greens and maybe a pine cone or two. Those tend to cost $18 — $22. Then we go to Michael’s or any other craft store to buy non breakable ornaments and anything else that might be appropriate. We use Michael’s because they have the largest selection where we live and they tend to have discounts and good coupon offers. We got everything we needed for 3 wreaths for $6.32 using coupons.

The problem with the wreaths we make for the cemetery is that each year, the cemetery management goes through and discards all the wreaths at a certain point along with all the decorations. So each year we have to start over which is why we have to buy new nonbreakable ornaments each year.

I like to have large hearts to add to both of my parents wreaths but had some trouble this year finding what I wanted. My husband (NormAl1792) finally found plain wooden hearts with the word Peace on them. That would do great but I didn’t like the plain wood, so I did a red wash on the two hearts.

After the wash, you couldn’t see the words Peace very well. I tried various methods with fine permanent markers for quilting, but what worked best was an ink pen. 

Most of the unbreakable ornaments come in groups and have long wire attachments. This makes it easy to twist them into the greenery.  The Christmas picks tend to have a long “stem” that you can stab to the back and twist around.

This is my mother’s wreath finished except for hanging the heart which we decided would be done best at the cemetery. 

She loved birds to we bought a pick that had a bird and a pine cone. That’s on the right.  There is a small heart on the left, several small ornaments and a larger poinsettia pick towards the bottom, plus the bow at the top.

My father, who served in WWII, has a less ornamental wreath as that is what I believe he would prefer. A few ornaments, a bow and some holly picks. 

We weren’t doing the wreaths this way primarily to save money; that was a side benefit, what was important was taking the time, energy and creativity to do something that is specially for them.  My sister and two nieces are also buried in that same cemetery and our family is the only one that has individually done wreaths. 

Here is my mother’s wreath at the cemetery with the heart added.

For our front door, cost was more a consideration. We got a $15 wreath, added some ornaments  and bows kept from the previous year and we are done. IMHO nicer than the $35 wreaths.

This is just something to think about when doing wreaths for any reason: you can do a nicer, more personal wreath for less than the generic wreaths.

So What are you working on?