DIY Boxwood Wreath

Raise your hand if you're kind of intimidated by the faux foliage aisles at craft stores. (I totally made that name up, btw. Faux foliage, I mean. But I'm going to roll with it.)

 

 You can't see me, but both my hands were raised for about 4 minutes, until I realized this post isn't going to write itself. So. If your hands flew to the sky, let's be new best friends.

 

But I've got boxwood bushes outside. And an old grapevine wreath. (Unless the stick-like wreath I've got isn't grapevine, and if that's the case...my only excuse is that I wasn't kidding about avoiding the faux foliage craft supplies.) And I like greenery that I'm not bringing to a slow yet inevitable black-thumb demise. (Which, for the record, includes about everything.)

 

Nothing ground-breaking in this little tutorial here. But if you're interested:

 

 

I know many people could whip out a great wreath out of almost anything. I'm not one of them. Because I'm usually afraid that (a) the wreath will be crap, (b) it will look like my great-grandmother did it, (c) nothing against my great-grandmother and her craftiness, (d) I really could've stuck with option A and been good here.

 

My, we're chatty today. Let's get started. It really is an easy project. Here's what I used:

 

 

I just kind of started by tucking in the boxwood branches between the wreath's grapevine-sticks.

 

 

Kept working my way around, trying to keep the tips of the boxwoods at an even(ish) distance from the wreath itself as I moved around.

 

 

I added hot glue sparingly at first. Then, as I got into it, I was hot gluing everything...the stems, the leaves, the wreath, my thumb...

 

Ultimately, I wanted things pretty secure without the glue where possible, but having the hot glue there will help me sleep better at night.

 

 

From the side: I didn't go all the way toward the back of the wreath, but after completing the front, I did go back and glue on some light "filler" boxwood branches to camouflage the sticks. I mean grapevines. Whatever.

 

 

And here it is. It's a wild child, and I like it. It actually brings out a little bit of green in the painting above it. We've had that painting there for 2-3 years, and I had no idea it had green in it. Go figure. 

 

 

That blue shelf is still on my hit-list, but I haven't found its replacement yet. The new wreath looks super dark in this pic of my ridiculously ever-evolving (but not necessarily improving) entryway, but it's actually a lovely bit of fresh green in reality:

 

So anyways. There. Go forth and make your own faux foliage wreath now! I think you could really use anything, not just boxwood branches (their benefit is that they stay green). It was actually kind of fun and therapeutic. And I've got two thumbs, anyway, so burning one of them off with hot glue is no big deal in the grand scheme of things.

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