Springtime Wreath

I wanted to make a simple wreath for my front door that looked Spring-like without being too flowery. I love flowers, but I didn’t want to use faux ones, and real ones wouldn’t last long, so I went in another direction.

I’m lucky because I have an eight-acre vineyard that just got pruned, so I simply gathered some leftover grapevines to make my wreath. You could also use willow cuttings to make something similar.

I just twisted the vines together until I had something vaguely round. I used a couple of pieces of string to hold sections together during the weaving process and removed them once the wreath was finished. It ended up slightly lopsided, but not bad.

I wanted a fairly natural look, so I started with a swag of mossy green lichen from the oak trees near my cottage. Deer love eating this stuff. They slurp it like spaghetti, it’s so fun to watch!

I added a few pussy willow branches to each side. We have some pussy willow near our pond, but I found this variety down the road near a creek.

I didn’t have a real bird nest, so I made a little jute twine nest. I covered a small bowl with plastic wrap and hot-glued the twine around the bottom and outside until it was the right height. Then I removed it from the bowl and cut off the extra wrap, before continuing to wrap and glue the twine down the inside edge and inner bottom of the nest.

Now I have a little jute bowl made from two layers of twine glued together around an inner layer of plastic wrap. I added a piece of twine to the back to tie it to the wreath.

I used some 7/8″ wooden eggs from Woodpeckers Crafts and painted them a shimmery pale blue-green with Modern Masters Metallic Paint in Teal. Once they were dry, I hot-glued them into the nest.

I wanted a bit more color, and some added stability, so I wrapped some jute twine with tiny spring green leaves around the whole wreath.

I found some linen-like ribbon and tied it into a loopy bow, adding a piece of twine to the back to attach it.

I tied the nest in place and adjusted it so the eggs wouldn’t look like they were falling out.

Now my front door is all dressed up for Spring!