Hello everyone!
It’s December! Officially. It is now becoming a tradition of mine, that I post 4 (or 3 :D) DIY posts during December. Today, I am bringing you the first Christmas DIY post, and it’s going to be 2 Advent Wreaths. Neither of them is a wreath per se. So it’s actually my take on it.
I am writing this post in collaboration with my Croatian blogging friend Petra. Her blog is all about organization, cleaning and DIYs, so I thought this would be the perfect time to collaborate. I know most of you don’t speak Croatian, but do check out her Advent wreath here, because I’m sure you’ll love it!
If you don’t know what an Advent wreath is, basically it always has 4 candles. So for four Sundays up until Christmas you light one candle, and it’s basically a weekly countdown 😀 This Sunday, 3rd December is the first Advent Sunday, so this is the perfect time to make this wreath!
Advent Wreath 1
This wreath was actually made by my Mom. She wanted to make one, so I asked her if she could take photos of the steps.
Step 1
She took 4 little tealights, and a red and a gold spray, and sprayed them entirely with red, and adding just a few bits of gold here and there.
Step 2
She then took a long, narrow container, not too deep, and lined it with clear kitchen foil, so that the moisture doesn’t destroy the container. (I am sorry that this photo is so bad, I am not sure what she was doing here :D).
Step 3
She then filled the entire container with moss, so that it covers the bottom of it entirely, and she trimmed off the excess foil.
Step 4
She then placed the tealights in the moss.
Step 5
Finally she decorated the entire surface of the moss with some ivy and some flowers. For flowers she used hydrangea and some tiny yellow flowers. I’m sorry, but we really couldn’t find anywhere how those yellow flowers are called.
Advent Wreath 2
This wreath will require quite a lot of tools and some resourcefulness.
Step 1
First thing you’ll need are some quite thick birch branches. At least 1 centimeter wider than your tealight on each side.
Step 2
You will need 4 pieces of birch, and I did them so that each one is slightly bigger than the other. I did this part (I am totally lying here, my boyfriend did it, and my step dad helped :D) with a simple hand saw. My pieces were 10, 12, 14.5 and 17 cm.
Step 3
Then comes the hardest and most annoying part. You have to carve out the wood so that the tealight can go in it. You can totally skip this step if you don’t have the tools and just place the tealights on top of the branches. However, I wanted them to go in the branches, of course I have to complicate my life. We used various different tools, including the old school bat and a chisel. But my step dad did decide to fix it afterwards, so he smoothed it all out.
As I said, if you don’t have the tools, you can definitely skip this step. And if you really want to know exactly what tools my step dad used to make these holes (there are at least 4 or 5 of them), feel free to contact me.
Step 4
I then took this nice decorative plate, and used a hot glue gun to secure the branches on the plate.
Now it’s time to decorate my wreath. I used some pine branches, pine cones, red glittery decorations and white cotton balls.
I put pine branches around my birch branches and glued them to the plate using hot glue gun. With the same technique, I added pine cones to the branches.
To add some colour, I added the red glitter balls and white cotton balls, also using a hot glue gun.
And that’s it! Not the easiest thing in the world, but I think it was worth it. On the photo above, you can see my wreath as a table centerpiece, with one candle lit. What do you think?
On the photo above, you can see the two wreaths next to each other. Which one do you like more?
And that’s it for this post! If you enjoy these Christmas DIY posts, please let me know what you want to see next. I am still planning some of the things I want to make. If you decide to make something yourself, please tag #KellysDiyXmas, and I will make sure to take a look.
See previous #KellysDiyXmas posts.
Are you going to make anything for Christmas this year? What are you going to make?
Thank you for reading!
See you soon x
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