My parents recently moved back from Memphis, TN to Duluth, MN. They did a lot of downsizing in the move including getting rid of most of their holiday decorations. At their new building people decorate their doors for the season, so I told my mom I’d make her a new wreath with a north woods theme.

Originally, I was going to get plastic animals and spray paint them gold and silver, but then I found these great rusted tin shapes on consumer crafts. They were the perfect size for a wreath and, at only $1.47 a pack, I couldn’t pass them up. I had pine cones in my stash from last year.

Then I found the perfect ribbon at Target that reminded me of a red flannel shirt. My husband suggested I add some shine with white glitter “snow”.

I think the results are really nice. It isn’t over the top, but I think very north woodsy with just a little shine. I hope my parents like it.

North Woods Wreath

Everything is wired into this wreath, so when you get tired of it you can take the decorations out and use the wreath form again.

Supplies:

• wreath
• pine cones
• metal north woods animal shapes such as deer, moose, bear, fish
• tacky glue
• white glitter
• red gingham ribbon, mine is from Target
• floral wire
• hot glue stitcks

Tools:

• small paintbrush
• scissors (ones you don’t mine cutting wire with)
• hot glue gun

1. Add glitter snow to your pine cones and animals – Use a small paint brush to put glue on the pine cones and animals where you think snow with sit on them. Then sprinkle with white glitter. Let dry and shake off any excess glitter.


You can go as light or heavy with the glitter as you wish, but I found that too much on the animals made them lose their shape a bit.

2. Add wires to the back of the animals – The tin shapes didn’t have anyway to wire them into the wreath and I didn’t want to glue them in. What I did was cut a length of floral wire, about 6″. Bend the end into a little circle small enough to fit on the back of your shape (this give more wire to glue to the back of the shape than just a straight end). Lay the circle on the back of the shape and cover with a generous amount of hot glue. Let dry.

3. Wire everything into the wreath – I started by wiring the ribbon in to mark the middle bottom. Then I wired in the pine cones by wrapping a length of floral wire around the cone in an opening and then wrapping the other end of the wire into the wreath frame.

After that I used the floral wire I have glued onto the tin shapes to wire them in.

Fluff the wreath and nestle everything in where you want it. Hang and enjoy a little of the north woods.