Hello everyone!  Welcome to something a little different here at Steve’s Country.  I showed one DIY that I did last spring, something to just hide some unsightly totes sitting in the corner of my living room.  It wasn’t perfect, but it sure looks a lot better.  So, today I will show my process in making this Christmas wreath that you see above.  It really is very simple and doesn’t cost much to make, one of the best things about this project.  And I like homemade, country look projects for any time of the year.  So, let’s get started…

At the beginning;

I wanted to use mainly what was at hand, and make this lightweight.  So I cut out 2 donut shaped pieces of cardboard, only because I didn’t have any cardboard thick enough to use just one piece.  Watch the cat while cutting so no one gets hurt.  Muffin always likes to help when I’m making things, that’s her in the corner of the picture.  She ran off with one of my smaller pine cones, made a perfect toy is what she thought.  Oh well.  Then I glued the 2 pieces together and put a piece of wood on top to make sure it stayed flat while the glue dried.  Worked perfectly.

Next, while the glue was drying;

I got my pine cones together and painted some of them white with a fast drying latex paint.  Unfortunately because I was unable to go out and get more pine cones I didn’t have enough small cones to use for filling in the smaller spaces.  And with thousands of pine cones laying around along my forest path, I certainly didn’t feel like buying any.  However, if you have no choice, they are available to purchase at many stores, including our Dollarama.  The cinnamon scented ones are actually half the price of the natural.

Then we get the glue gun out;

Along with everything else we want to use and start putting it all together.  I use a heavy duty glue gun, not the hobby kind, and a stronger binding glue.  I found some nice burlap ribbon with red stripes to wrap around the cardboard, makes it look a lot nicer, especially if there are any gaps since I didn’t have enough of the smaller cones.  I just glued it down on the back, then wrapped it around the circle, just putting small dabs of glue in places so it stayed in place properly.

Now we get started with the pine cones;

I’m certainly not a professional at this sort of thing, but really, I don’t want it to look like it came from a store, otherwise I could just buy one.  So now comes the addition of some pine cones gluing them, with the glue gun, in place in no particular order, I prefer it that way, but you can put them on in any way you want.

And finally we add the extras;

Which includes some small decorations, like birds and balls, plus a couple mini wreaths.  And I added some artificial green spruce branch tips for making it more authentic in its outdoor look with the pine cones.  And, that’s it.  I added a piece of twine tied on at the top to hang my wreath and there we have the finished product at the top of the page.  As for size, mine is about 14 inches (35cm) across.

And to show you another wreath;

Here is the one I made for autumn.  I should have done a post for this one too, must admit, I didn’t think of it.  Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, have a wonderful weekend and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

© 2019 Steve McLeod.