A night of wreath making + tutorial

This little nut wreath is not only beautiful, the birds love it! Dianne taught us how to make these wreaths and they are one of the many items we'll be making in future Crafts at Mistletoe Cottage sessions.

A quickie "how to."

Supplies: straw wreath form, glue gun, knife, walnuts, dried hydrangeas, raffia, dried rose hips, sloes, or other colourful hedgerow fruits.

1. Take your walnuts, carefully wedge the knife between the shell halves and slice them in half.

2. Start gluing the walnuts (shell down) to the wreath form starting with the inner or outer circle - leave the back of the wreath blank.

3. Glue individual, dried hydrangea flowers in a circle between the two rings of walnuts then glue some dried rose hips or other colourful dried items to add colour.

Alternatively, skip the flowers and add another ring of walnut halves.

4. Tie a bit of raffia or gingham ribbon to the top to hang.

5. Hang it up outdoors and watch your garden birds flock to it.

TIP: When the walnut shells are empty, glue brightly coloured dried rose hips or articial berries inside the shells to make the wreath last longer. Or spray the whole wreath gold and tie a nice wide ribbon on it to hang.

Here are a few busy ladies enjoying our wreath making evening on Thursday.

I'm afraid my photography skills were lacking on the night, but you get the idea - wish I could blame it on the wine.

We supplied a variety of materials and every person made something entirely unique, some wreaths were traditional, others were more minimalist. If I was really on the ball, I'd have a photo of each - but I wasn't.

This series of Crafts at Mistletoe cottage is finished but we enjoyed it so much more will be planned soon. Check back here for links to a schedule and click here to see a few more photos of the night.

Comments

[river]

thanks this is perfect for the holiday decorations!

[Grandmother Wren]

Beautiful! Perfect - and different - gift for our bird feeding friends.

[HowToMe]

OOOO I love it! I'm going to link to your site on my natural ornaments post.

I was prepping to make some birdseed ornaments and then read that peanut butter is not good for birds (no salivary gland). 8-O Anyway, that put a stop to that project.

Your finished project is beautiful. I hope to be able to make one sometime soon. :-)

[sukigirl]

It looks lovely, thanks so much for the tutorial!