Make Your Own Fresh Christmas Wreath Like a Pro

Creating your own fresh Christmas wreath is the perfect way to add some customized Christmas decor to your home, and you can even use the tree trimmings from your Christmas tree to save tons of money!

You may be wondering why in the world she is posting about Christmas at the beginning of September….well, I have some really good reasons!

ONE, this blogging thing takes a bit to gain momentum, and I really want this post to help out those that might be looking to create their own fresh Christmas wreath, or maybe improve their Christmas decor and I fear that if I wait until the holiday season, it wont have enough time to get out there to those that may want to see it.

TWO, planning, planning, planning. I want you to be able to see this early and PLAN! If you see this early and SAVE IT, you will be able to make a plan and create this fresh Christmas wreath without cramming it in between all the holiday festivities.

Why should I make a fresh Christmas wreath?

Well, why do you think? There are so many wonderful reason to create your own fresh Christmas tree, but the main one for me is….they are so beautiful and unique.

Each fresh Christmas wreath is unique and you can do so much with them!

How about cost? Have you tried buying a fresh custom Christmas wreath from a store? Talk about pricey. Why not make one yourself!

Want another reason? Well, if you purchase or cut down your own Christmas tree, you may know that you ultimately end up cutting some of the bottom boughs off of your Christmas tree in order to make it fit into that Christmas tree stand.

After years of cutting down our own Christmas tree, I have come up with a lot of fun ways to reuse those cut and discarded boughs. Here are a few images from my Christmas pasts:

I turned some boughs into a real evergreen garland around my front door

Sometimes simply hanging them on the wall as a swag is all you need, like I did in my Christmas entry one year.

One year, I gathered up a few boughs and hung them with one of my found deer antlers. This is one of my most favorite.

Last year I decided to create a fresh Christmas wreath and Christmas swag for my home using my left over pine boughs. Check them out:

This bough was created in a similar method as my method to upgrade cheap Christmas garland.

And here is a picture of what we will be working on today, our very own fresh Christmas wreath:

Are you ready?

Lets make a fresh Christmas wreath!

What you will need to make your own fresh Christmas wreath:

Gardening or Work Gloves
Floral Wire
Live pine boughs
Wreath form
Wire Cutters
assorted evergreen and greenery(I used eucalyptus, olive tree branches, and boxwood cuttings

This first thing you want to do is cut down your pine boughs to fit your wreath form. You want them to overhang a few inches. They will overlap on an angle, so they will cover more than you think.

You may want to cut your boughs as you go so that you can make them fit just right.

Start by laying a piece of pine bough at an angle on your wreath form. I used an old form I upcycled from a dollar store wreath. You want to lay it on an angle, hanging slightly down. Take some wire and secure it to the form my twisting the wire tight. This is where those gardening gloves will come in handy. Sometimes pine boughs can be super sharp and painful when poked in the finger, so using the gloves will prevent any of that.

Once you have one piece tied on, you can begin to overlap and secure the rest of your pine boughs. These will act as a base for the rest of the wreath.

Make sure to keep them all going the same direction. They will look much better this way.

Here we are, just about done securing the pine boughs in place. You can see how the pine boughs are all laying the same direction all the way around the wreath form. You could finish it off at this point and have a really nice looking fresh Christmas wreath. But….why stop there when you can give it so much more and make it truly unique. This is where our other greenery comes in handy.

Making a fresh Christmas wreath unique:

With the base of the fresh Christmas wreath done, its time to add some more fresh greenery to make it pop! I used eucalyptus, olive branches, cedar tree cuttings, and boxwood cuttings. I got my eucalyptus from Trader Joes, the olive branches from my sisters house, and got the boxwood cuttings and cedar cuttings from some of the bushes on the side of my house. You can see that this Christmas wreath did not cost me much!

So, make sure you check out different routes if you want to save a bit of money. I am sure you can find a friend or family member that may let you have a few cuttings from a tree. You only need a little bit. Otherwise, get some from Trader Joes, they always have awesome greenery.

Adding greenery to my fresh Christmas wreath:

I started by bunching and layering some of my greenery. I started with a piece of cedar, added some boxwood, topped it with a few pieces of eucalyptus and olive leaf pieces and then tied them together at the end with some floral wire.

They key is to layer them and shorten the pieces on the very top so that you will be able to see all the different textures of the plants.

Make about 10 of these and see how far they get you. If you pre-assemble them you can lay them out and make sure you have enough for the whole wreath and decide if you need to add more of anything.

I have laid them out here on my live Christmas wreath, and I am loving how they look.

Once you have them all in place and you know you know you have enough for the entire wreath it is time to secure them to the base of the wreath.

This is just as easy as taking the wire and securing them to one of the pine boughs under neath. You can also secure them to the wreath form if you can get to it, but by this point you should not see any of the wreath form.

Add as much greenery as you want and make it as full as you want! One thing I failed to mention is that you should lay them the same direction that you laid the base pine boughs.

When you are done, it could look something like mine:

I absolutely love creating my own live Christmas wreaths. They are so fun to make and they can use up discarded pieces of pine trees or other greenery you may have lying around. The only caveat to these wreaths are that they die, and eventually need to be discarded. But have no fear, you can simply cut the wire and toss out the dead pieces and reuse your wreath form for the next holiday!

Want to see how I use a similar method on my cheap fake Christmas garland? Check out this video:

How to get your fresh Christmas wreath to last longer:

You can get your fresh Christmas wreath to last longer by spritzing it with water a few times a week. You could even do it everyday, but I found that I would forget. The one I created for my porch was outdoors, and I never sprayed it. Between the winds and the snow, I figured it was a waste.

But, you have to go into this knowing they wont last forever anyways. They will last just long enough for you to enjoy them for the holiday season.