Oy… it’s Wednesday folks and I am feelin’ in a funk. It’s been a slowly creeping by, tired, “I don’t want to adult today” kind of day! Little man has been crawling into our bed around 4am every night for the last few weeks. It’s my fault really… I’ve allowed him to do it and now we are paying the price. Transitioning him back to staying in his own bed is starting to get difficult. Last night we decided to make a bed for him on the floor next to ours in hopes that he would rather be in his own bed instead. Nope! He threw himself a pity party and decided to throw the pillow we gave him into the hall over and over instead! Insert face palm emoji here!
Needless to say I’m tired but the show must go on! So here I am! I thought I’d finally post the tutorial for the faux garland that I made when Jason was out of town a few weeks ago. It was a quick project to keep me busy while he was gone. Boy oh boy do I love it! It’s just so pretty and I love the way it looks across the top of our old piano.
DIY Faux Garland
For me this was a free DIY because I raided my father in-law’s personal flower shop, with permission of course! But most people don’t have a generous father in-law who just so happens to have an amazing ability when it comes to creating faux floral pieces and you will need to head to Hobby Lobby or Michael’s to pick up your greenery if that’s the case. I personally prefer Hobby Lobby especially when the greenery stems are 50% off!
Greenery
When looking for what kind of greenery I wanted in my garland I knew that I wanted the garland to look very full with a few variations of greens. I picked a base stem that was neutral and full and a secondary base stem to help break up the look throughout. Then I picked filler stems to add more dimension and a fun element. Below is how many of each stem I got. I had maybe one of the base stems left when I was all done but it’s better to be safe than sorry and have to go back to the store so I would get the full six.
Putting It Together
You will need to also grab some floral wire, this is what you are going to use to hold everything together.
I started by placing one base stem, a secondary base stem, and one of the long dangly stems together. Dangly is a word right? Although this is where you are starting it is actually the end of your garland. I planned to add in this “dangly” stem on the end so that when I draped my garland off of the piano or table it would hang nicely as the leaves don’t have wire in them. I used the floral wire to connect them all together.
I then took the base stem and cut the branches into three parts (that’s how my stem came naturally.) I started placing the branches in a line creating length as I slightly overlapped the ends. I found points throughout to pinch the branches together and connect them with floral wire. Be sure to pull the wire as tight as possible to hold everything together well.
Once I had reached 4-5 feet in length I decided to turn the opposite direction. I intertwined a few base stem branches about 6 inches from the end facing the opposite direction I had been placing them before. I wired them in and continued to place the base stem branches to create length in the other direction.
Overall I made my garland about 7 feet. After I had the base stems all put together I added in my secondary stems and then used my filler stems to create dimension after that. I wired each of them into the base that was already created as I went.
And there you have it! It took about an hour to complete and like I said before I just love how it turned out! I think the next one I make I’m going to use eucalyptus stems! Wouldn’t that be pretty?! I hope you run out right now and get some stems so you can make one too! Share your pics in the comments if you try it!
