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Description

Making a Christmas Wreath from Foraged Materials

Resources

Knife or strong scissors, Garden shears, Gardening gloves, Hazel/Willow shoots, Ivy, Holly, Conifers, String, Ribbon

Instructions

This activity is taken from an article written by one of our leaders Barry Smith on the Frontier Bushcraft website: http://frontierbushcraft.com/2012/11/27/making-a-christmas-wreath-from-foraged-materials/

Step 1:
To make the base structure take one of the shoots – I used hazel in this insnace – and gently bend it to ease the material into a circle.

Then tie it off to complete the hoop.

Then add another shoot of hazel, bending it as you go, and tie this off to the already-formed hoop at about 4 or 5 points all the way round.

A good tip here is to leave good long tails on all of your knots, you can then use the ‘spare’ later when attaching more material.

Step 2:
Now we have a base structure we can begin to build up the body of the wreath. What I do is simply tie on Holly all the way around, one piece at a time.

Then just keep adding more strands of Holly until you have a good thick body of material all the way around.

Step 3:
If you haven’t got your gloves on yet put them on now!

The next step is to weave your ivy and conifers into the body of the wreath.

You shouldn’t need to tie these on, just push then through the holly by their thick end and weave in and out through the wreath.

Try to be gentle and not rip all of the berries off the Holly.

Now keep doing this until you are happy that the wreath is generously ‘thatched’. It should look substantial as it will shrink a bit as it dries out.

Step 4:
Tie on some bows, add a loop of string onto the back and hang on your front door!

Tags

• Bushcraft
• christmas
• craft
• craft badge
• wreath

Badge Links

• Creative - Activity