Scavenger Chic

Winter, Ivy and Seed Pod Wreath

• By Joan
• January 7, 2016
• 5 Comments

Way back in September, I got a call from my middle son, Kevin.  He had been mowing his lawn and had run over an old stump that the previous owners had left behind. The stump did some kind of damage to his lawnmower making his mower unusable. 

“Do you need me to come down and bring my mower?”

“No, I’m good, I’ll just weed whack where the grass is long.”

A couple more weeks go by and we had a chance to be at his house.  Noticing the extra long grass…”I see you haven’t got your mower fixed, I can bring ours down tomorrow and have you set for a while.”

“No thanks,  I’ve been busy but I’ll get to it this weekend.”

OK, now it’s the end of October, I imagine all his neighbors giving him dirty looks. “Did you ever mow that lawn? I have informants that will let me know if you’re lying (his brother).”

“Uh, no.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow with a mower.”

What does this have to do with a wreath?  Well, while we were cleaning up the yard, we had a chance to go in the front door. Laying by the front door was a flowered wreath I had given him and his wife last year similar to this one.  They had had it hung with a command hook, but the command hook kept coming unstuck.  Being between the storm door and front door, I think it got too hot.

“You can’t hang that back up.”

“Why?”

“That is for spring and summer.”  He obviously needed a new wreath and I knew just the person to make one for him, and it would make a great Christmas present too.  And that is what broken lawn mowers and winter wreaths have in common.

Start with an inexpensive grape vine wreath and some twigs.

Hot glue the twigs around  the wreath so that they are all facing out the same direction.  You can skip this step if you like, I just like the extra sticky character.

Spray paint the wreath lightly with white spray paint. You can skip this step too, if you like…I like the extra contrast that the white paint provides against dark doors.

OK, you can’t skip this step…the majority of the wreath was created using silk flowers from the craft store. Use ivy as the base and fill in with any other contrasting winter greenery of your choice.

The amount of silk flowers above was enough for 2 wreaths, so you can easily make one for yourself and a friend (or a son and his brother.)

Start hot gluing.  You may need wire to attach some of the vines if they don’t want to stay put.  Always glue your add ons in the same direction.

In true Scavenger Chic style, I thought my wreath needed a little more filler.  Instead of going back to the craft store, I remembered a hike the family had taken on Thanksgiving morning to exercise the dogs, where I had noticed some spent milkweed pods.

Those are two of my granddoggys and a nephewdog.

There were also some thistle seed pods.

The milk weed pods were opened and glued on as is.

I spray painted the thistle seed pods and also hot glued them on. For full disclosure, if I had to do it again, I would probably leave off the thistle seeds.  Those things are full of prickers and it felt like I was holding a cactus.

I also gave Kevin a wreath hangar so they don’t have to rely on the command hooks. I hope they like it.

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