My holiday decorating is officially complete! Over the past week I have been working on this final project, which I personally think is a show stopper. Yes, I have adorned my staircase with gorgeous gold ornament garland and my woodland chic tree is a wonderful, but my illuminated homemade fresh garland really takes the cake. Why? In addition to being a fragrant and very attractive piece of holiday decor, it is actually made from waste! Well not really waste, but trimmings that would have gone to waste had I not rescued them. This garland is made from the tree trimmings found in the discard bin at Home Depot! Additional fun fact- I scored these trimmings for a grand total of $0. Yep, FOR FREE!!! So fabulous and really speaks to the saying "one man's trash is another man's treasure." Here is how I went about turning these perfectly good trimmings/waste into a gorgeous masterpiece.
Supplies
- Natural Fiber Rope
- Green Floral Wire
- 2 - 100 ct Light Strands
- Spool of Wide Ribbon (here and here)
- Extension Cord
- 1" Nails (Optional, but they do look cleaner than using wire)
- Tree Trimmings from Home Depot (or equivalent)
- *Note- You will need to get about a shopping cart full tree trimmings in order to make two strands of garland. Just ask one of the employee tree trimmers if you can have some of the trimmings. Most likely they are going to be more than happy to let you take whatever you want (I have never been turned down).
Instructions
- Trim off 6"-8" pieces of lush pine branches (*I like to work in batches, so I will create a large pile of trimmed pieces to attach to my garland, but you can also cut pieces as you go along if you prefer)
- Loosely drape the rope along the space you wish to adorn with garland
- Add 8 inches of additional rope to each side and then cut your piece of rope using Fiskars (or similar)
- Starting 8 inches in on your rope, gather your first bunch of pine trimmings, wrap with green floral wire and continue to wrap onto rope, never cutting the wire
- Rotate the rope slightly, gather your next bunch of trimmings and attach to the rope by wrapping the trimmings and rope in the floral wire
- Continue this process of attaching and rotating until the garland reaches your desired length
- Tie off the end of the garland by wrapping wire tightly around approx. 10x
- Take one strand of 100ct lights and carefully wrap the strand around the garland, making sure avoid the bondage/mummy look
- Tie a knot at each loose end of the rope and use that as an anchor to wrap your wire around when securing it to your railing. (See my ornament garland post for details on attaching garland to your stair railing)
- To make the bows pictured in this post, see this YouTube video
- The wreath was purchased at Costco for $15.99 and wrapped in a 100ct Strand of White Christmas Tree Lights.
- **Make to wrap your garland and wreath with the light plugs all on the same side and the light sockets all on the same side so that they can seamlessly connect when you go to install your garland/wreath masterpiece.
