Traditional Christmas Wreath With Natural Elements

Hey, it's Melissa from Welcome to the Woods. I'm going to be showing you how to make this beautiful traditional Christmas wreath incorporating lots of natural elements. The first natural element that I'm going to use are pine cones. I collected some of these outside and then I baked them at 350 degrees in my oven for 10 minutes. It does smell a little bit, but I do that just to dry them out, make sure I kill any bugs that might be in there. Now I'm going to paint the tips of these white with acrylic craft paint. Now I'm done with my cute little pine cone. I'm just going to repeat this process again and again. I'd be curious to know you guys, have you started thinking about the holidays yet? Have you thought about doing any crafts already? Let me know in the comments. Also, if you're loving this idea of using natural elements to make a wreath, go ahead and click share. Let me show you some other things that I have. These, aren't these pretty? They are natural. They're from a tree in my backyard. I'm not even sure what kind of berry they are. If you know, go ahead and let me know in the comments. I don't think they're edible or anything except for maybe birds, but they sure are beautiful. I'm going to plan to put these in the wreath as well. Then the other natural element that I'm going to be using is these white sticks. These sticks were twigs that I broke off of trees outside. Then I spray painted them white and added some glitter while the paint was still wet. I think these are going to be really pretty texture as well. Okay, so now I have some of my supplies out here. Let me just finish doing the pine cones. Now I am done doing all of the pine cones. I did do white paint on some. Some I added glitter to the edges. Then other ones, I just spray painted all white. The wreath I'm going to be using is actually something I got on after Christmas clearance last season. I got it really, really cheap. If you need to buy one, I got this 36 inch wreath from Walmart for $15 on clearance for like $3 or something. It was so, so cheap. I thought, well, that's the perfect opportunity, just a blank slate for me to make a beautiful wreath. The first thing we want to do, of course, is clip off the tag and then fluff out all of these branches. There we go. To make this project even better, I would suggest weaving your own wreath. I didn't have the evergreen resources or the time to do that for this particular one. I also wanted it to last a little longer, but totally up to you. If you want a completely natural wreath, I think that would be the way to go. I have done some of those in the past, but I think to make it look the most realistic, if you're using artificial, make sure that you're bending all of the arms in one direction so it looks more handmade or more natural. Okay, now we're going to just set the pine cones aside. We're going to set them aside and I'm going to get started with the berries. This is my pop of color in this wreath. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to weave these throughout in the back. Another thing you can do right now, I'm attaching one that has a very thick branch, so I'm just going to take one of the evergreen branches and wrap it around to hold it in place. Now, you wouldn't be able to do this if this was real, but since I'm using a faux evergreen wreath, I can just secure the branch like that just so that it doesn't move around as much, and then the end, I'm still going to tuck back underneath the whole thing. Okay, and now we're going to do the same process with the white sticks that I spray painted and glittered. Okay, so now I have my whiter and we're going to kind of fold it in half a little bit and then take that halfway mark, wrap it around your pine cone, and then pull gently. There we go. It's on there. So now I can attach this pine cone onto my wreath. Stick it where I want it, and then we're going to thread the wire through. So I want it right there. I'm going to flip it over. See, here are my wires. Now, the wreath form has two, so that's great because we want to go around both so that it doesn't slide around. Okay, so here are my two ends, and I'm just going to twist. Okay, there we go. Now I have my bow. It's looking really cute, and I'm just going to attach this onto my wreath. Okay, so as far as where I'm going to place it on my wreath, I want it hanging down these little ribbons to hang down into the middle, and I'm going to be putting it opposite of the heaviest part of the wreath. So the part where I have the majority of the stuff, I try to make it even, but inevitably there's always one spot that's kind of heavier. So right here is a lot of berries and a lot of pine cones, so I'm going to put the bow opposite that right at the top, and we'll just use those wire pieces to secure that down the same way we did the pine cones. Okay, we're all done. What do you guys think? I need you to leave me a comment now. One of two things. First of all, let me know what are some Christmas crafts or holiday decor that you would like to see me tackle on my channel, and second, what are some ways that you would have improved this craft? Other natural elements that you would want to use in your wreath, or just, you know, something, some ideas you have to make this craft better. Go ahead and let me know in the comments. I read every single one. Thank you so much for watching. If you're not already following my page, be sure to do that, and if you have some wreaths or other DIY decor projects you want to share with everybody, go ahead and join the Welcome to the Woods group. That is where my followers and my viewers share their DIY projects, and we would love to have you. If you want to see more projects like this, click share on this video.