Create Your Own Holiday Wreath

Wreaths are wonderful decorations for your home during the holiday season. Aside from the traditional place of honor on the front door, wreaths can be used as centerpieces on your holiday table and can be hung above your mantle or in other prominent spots in your home. Wreaths can range from the elaborately elegant store-bought wreath to the charmingly sloppy homemade wreath created by your children.

When involving your children in crafts, make sure they have age-appropriate tasks. Preschoolers can use safety scissors and cut out basic shapes, and they can use Elmer’s glue to attach their decorations to a wreath base. Only older children should be allowed to use regular scissors and hot glue guns with supervision. Children of all ages can be given the job of searching for pine cones and other natural decorations outside.
Most craft stores sell wreath bases in varying sizes. You can buy bases made of wire, styrofoam, grapevine, evergreens, or twigs. You can also make your own base by bending a wire coat hanger into whatever shape you desire. Wire and styrofoam wreaths should only be used when you’re planning on covering the whole wreath, whereas most of the work is done for you with a grapevine, evergreen, or twig wreath base.

The decorations that can be used on a wreath are limited only by your imagination. Children can cut leaves, snowmen, Christmas trees, and snowflakes from construction paper and paste them to a styrofoam base. Pine cones can be hot glued to a wire base, and holly leaves and berries added for decorations. Fake fruit and flowers are popular decorations on wreathes, as are the ubiquitous bows. Some more unconventional decorations include gingerbread or salt dough shapes (snowmen, trees, etc), bells, candy, tin ornaments, photographs, empty thread spools (which can themselves be decorated), large beads, acorns and other nuts, wood shapes (bought at the craft store and painted), and any other item that strikes your fancy. Decorations can be attached with wire, hot glue, paste, staples, or tape.
Here are some basic wreath crafts: