This year was the third year that I've had friends over to make Christmas wreaths. It's a fun way to visit while being creative... and also getting into the holiday spirit while we're at it.
Here's how this type of party works: have each person bring a wreath form (I prefer grapevine wreaths but you can also use the wire wreath forms or styrofoam forms), ribbon for a bow, and natural materials from their garden. Ideas for this include cedar, spruce, Arizona cypress, fir, pine, holly, cotoneaster, Oregon grape, dried roses or hydrangea flowers, rose hips, dried sedum 'Autumn Joy' flower heads, holly berries, pinecones, seed heads and so on. It's fun foraging for the materials.
I provided floral wire for wiring on the materials to our wreath forms, extra ribbon just in case someone wanted to use something different, a glue gun... and most important of all, molasses cookies and hot cider.
The photos are of 3 of the wreaths we created. The one with the red bow was made by my friend Maralee and the large grapevine wreath was made by my friend Theresa. I made the one with the copper bow and accents because I thought it'd be fun to do something "sparkly" for a change. I forgot to take a photo of Dagni's swag before she left (sorry, Dagni!) but will do another posting on making swags because they're also an attractive, fun project to make.
Before I forget, the reason I like to use grapevine wreaths as a base is because you can just tuck and stuff in the greenery and accents in the various nooks and crannies without having to do much wiring. So it's much faster to work with. If you use a wire wreath form, you can wire together small bundles of greenery and then wire each bundle onto the wreath form. Maralee's wreath was made with a wire form.
I encourage you all to try this as well. It's simple, it's really economical, and the finished wreaths always look great with all of the natural materials in them. Be sure to save your wreath form after the holidays so you can use it again next year.
