Tag Archives: holiday decorating

Mardi Gras wreath

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Half my family are from New Orleans, which means I have been to Mardi Gras many times. It also means I have pounds and pounds of Mardi Gras beads. Aside from bringing them out while holding a Mardi Gras party, I am not really sure what to do with them. I decided to make a wreath with some of them.

As a part of Christmas decorations, I had bought a greenery wreath. The greenery was attached to a metal ring that has prongs evenly spaced around the circumference. I opened up the prongs, so I could remove the greenery and compost them. Then I decided to repurpose the ring to serve as the base of the Mardi Gras wreath. The prongs worked perfectly to hangs the ends of the Mardi Gras beads. I then just kept the middle part of the bead necklaces between the prongs. I kept adding more and more beads to fill in the wreath.

Adding beads to metal wreath base

Once I had added plenty of beads and the wreath felt complete, I added a few necklaces that have the krewe’s medallion on them. I spaced those out so that they would hang evenly along the wreath. I also added three necklaces (gold, green, and purple because New Orleans Mardi Gras) to the top. Instead of wrapping them through the wreath, I placed them inside the top three prongs and pull the rest of the wreath, so they could be used as the wreath’s hanger. Finally I added a mask near the top. I used pliers to pull the metal prongs back together. I then used ribbon to wrap around the wreath at each prong location. I also wrapped the ribbon around the prongs as they did not close fully.

Then voilà, I have my finished Mardi Gras wreath. Laissez les bon temps rouler.

Mardi Gras wreath

Halloween Wreath

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Like many, my neighborhood likes to decorate for Halloween. I never have before, except for maybe putting a couple of pumpkins on my door step. This year, since like most people, I am home mostly, I decide to decorate a bit. I really wanted to create a Halloween wreath, but I didn’t like the store bought ones that are rather gaudy and mainly plastic. I decided to create a rather simple wreath mainly with materials I already have. I am rather happy with the way it came out, and here it is hanging on my front door.

Finished Halloween wreath hanging on my door

It was fairly easy to make. First, I went into my yard and gathered a bunch of twigs that were relatively smooth. As there is a large sycamore in my yard, and sycamores are famously self-pruning, so finding nice smooth twigs was easy.

Branches I gathered in my yard

Then I painted the twigs black with acrylic paint. I found some thick, but pliable wire in my boxes of crafting supplies and used it to form a ring about a foot in diameter. Then I bought some black yarn.

Branches painted black with black yarn to tie them to the wire circle I made

Next, I used the yarn to tie some of the thicker twigs onto the wire to form the wreath base.

The larger branches tied to the wire circle to form the base of the wreath

I kept adding the twigs, and I started using black ribbon to tie the smaller twigs to the base twigs. I wanted the black ribbon to visible but not the yarn.

All branches are now tied together with yarn or black ribbon

Then I embellished with orange and purple ribbon. I also used this extra ribbon to tighten how the twigs were tied together.