Steps to Create Your Own Wreath

Down here in Mobile, Alabama, the holiday after Christmas is Mardi Gras! There are no St. Valentine’s Day decorations when you’ve got moonpies and king cakes to be had! So instead of creating a purple, pink, and red heart-themed wreath, I created a purple, gold, and green festive Mardi Gras wreath to adorn my door for the next few weeks!

Even if you don’t have parades or beads, you can use the same techniques to create a wreath for any season! I followed the same ideas to create my fall wreath back in November.

Here’s what I picked up at Michael’s to use:

The basic steps for any holiday wreath:

wrap wreath form in garland or ribbon
add accent on bottom left or right
secure something big in the middle
hang it like you just don’t care

The ribbon I bought was $19.99. Fortunately I had a 50% coupon, but it was only good for one item. So I risked it and only got 1 roll.

I started by wrapping the wire ribbon tightly around the straw wreath form. My ribbon had green edges, so I overlapped one green edge as the ribbon was going around.

Everything was going great…until I ran out of ribbon…

Oops!

Before I ran back to the store, I glued the ends down to the wreath form so they wouldn’t go anywhere while I was gone.

On the plus side of having to make 2 trips to Michael’s for one project, I was able to use another coupon and save $10!

Once home again, I glued the start of the new ribbon to the end of the old ribbon. It worked out that they stopped and started on the “back” so it will be hidden.

With the ribbon securely in place, I went about creating a little visual interest using what I can only guess are floral arrangement accents. I cut some of the length off.

Then I stuck 2 of them into the ribbon in the same direction.

Next I bent the third “accent” stem like so.

That way I was able to tuck it into the ribbon as well but it would go in the opposite direction.

After I was satisfied with the “accent”, I took the hot glue gun to the underside of my Mardi Gras faces and attached them onto the front of the wreath.

I picked up these faces from Party City since Michael’s didn’t quite have what I was looking for. They are plastic so the hot glue made it a little melty. I quickly stuck it on the wreath and it wasn’t a problem.

When I was trying to figure out if the smiley face (purple) or the sad face (green) went on the left; my husband, Brandon, insightfully said, “Happy, then sad.” And it makes sense considering the Mardi Gras season is a period of joy, excitement and debauchery before the solemn, penitential time of Lent.

For those who don’t know, Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, which is the official start of Lent. And in Mobile (the birthplace of Mardi Gras in the United States) the party gras season lasts for about 3 weeks prior to the actual Fat Tuesday day.

This year Mardi Gras is February 17th and my front door is ready!