Winter Decorating Series: how to create a winter wreath

Today starts my winter decorating series, where I’m remaking what I have into something new on a very small budget and the first on my list is making over this $5 wreath I’ve used in the past.

I’ve had two of these pine and pine cone wreaths hanging in my basement for a couple of years, so I dragged them up, dusted them off, and got started giving them new life. 

This is the first year I’ve had the urge to add a little gold to my winter decor. Normally it’s not a color I work with; black seems to be my go-to but I picked up a $1 gold pick at Dollar General and a 50-cent roll of ribbon at the thrift store and that’s all I needed to get a new look.

With the pine on the wreaths un-squished and fluffed up I was ready to get to work. I got out my wire cutters, zip ties, and glue gun. 

I used the wire cutters and cut the gold pick branches apart and my intentions were to zip tie them to the wreath but it didn’t work out like I wanted so I went with the hot glue gun and that did the trick. I knew I wanted to repeat the gold and I was lucky the blue ribbon I found at the thrift store had a gold thread running through it. Must be it was meant to be. 

I must say my ribbon-tying skills are way below par but I did the best I could and hot-glued it into place.  After I stood back and looked at it I thought the bow needed to be fuller and bigger but I had already glued it, so I left it. 

For $1.50 I created two identical wreaths, one for each entrance door that will get me through the winter months. We already have snow here in Michigan so they look pretty hanging on the doors.

I have to show you the door open because we have storm doors on and it doesn’t make for pretty picture-taking with the glare from the glass. 

I’m trying my best not to make things look Christmasy this year. I intend to create things that will work all winter long and that I won’t get tired of seeing. 

If you are also trying to create a pretty Christmas/Winter home I encourage you to pull all those decorations out of storage and see how you can reuse them to get new looks. It’s a fun challenge to create with little or no money. A few of the things I’m going to share with you during this series will be so simple and cheap that you’ll get a good chuckle so come back to see what’s next.