As a child, I loved to make a Christmas wreath for our home. I am not particularly craft-oriented, or at least I’m not really skilled and detail-oriented. The two go together. If I can make a Christmas wreath, you can too. Honestly!
The traditional Christmas wreath is made from branches. For these wreathes, I find that cedar branches look best if you can find them. They lay very flat and are quite elegant. If you can’t find cedar branches, look for conifers like fir and pine. Spruce wreathes are lovely too, but the needles can make your hands sore, so they would involve gloves. I get my branches after a big wind storm in late November or early December, and I collect them from local streets. In most areas, collecting branches from parks is not legal and should be avoided.
Take a base and connect the branches to the base. This can be a round of foam, in which case you push the branches into the foam and wind them around. I’m cheap (perhaps frugal is a better word?), so I use an old wire coat hanger with the top hook taken off. I wind the branches in and out of the coat hanger, around and around the hanger until it is completely covered with branches. You may want to tie the first few branches onto the base with some brown packing string so that your wreath does not spontaneously spring apart. When you have finished winding the branches around the wreath, you should not be able to see any part of the base.
To decorate the wreath, some people wrap a ribbon around and around, securing the branches. I like my wreath to be a little loose, so I simply add a big velvet bow and some attractive pine cones or a bell at the bottom. And there it is: a lovely Christmas wreath.