Wreath Wraiths

At our house, we have something of a tradition for the weekend after Thanksgiving. We often go up into the Berkeley hills and look around for greens and fallen stuff. By stuff, I mean just about anything that strikes our fancy--eucalyptus buds, pine cones, dried pods, anything that has survived the first rains and looks interesting.

Back at the house, we take this material and work the greens onto a wreath frame. This year, we got the frames at an art supply store, and we also had one we'd saved from a previous year's purchased wreath.

You can see in this photograph that we attach the twigs with short lengths of wire to the frame.

It takes a fair amount of material to make it around a 12-inch wreath frame. With my once-a-year level of practice, it takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to do this task.

Once you have the greens completed, the fun begins, and you get to do the real decorating. We have two different techniques for attaching the decorations: wire and (most often) glue gun. Wire is hard to work with for the decorations, but if the wreath is intended for kitchen use, it is preferred, because it is non-toxic. One of the wreaths I made this year is composed of California Bay (the greens), cinnamon sticks and red peppers. I kept the use of the glue gun to the absolute minimum.

To glue on the decorations, you put a dot of glue onto a stem of the underlying greens and then hold the decoration in place until the glue dries.

In this way, you work your way around the entire wreath until you have the whole thing anchored.

Below is one of the wreaths we made this year.