This past Christmas my family went the day after Thanksgiving to cut down our Christmas tree. It was a wonderful experience, playing in the snow in Colorado. Throughout the holiday season, the tree was beautiful, it fit perfectly in our home and we cherished it!  Fast forward to the second weekend of 2019 and the tree was still up – it was too beautiful to take down! After much consideration, I decided to repurpose the tree into a Modern Wood Wreath! Such a great way to remember our 2018 tree and the adventure it added to the season. 

Already got rid of your Christmas tree??? No worries, Amazon has wood rounds available for sale!

Materials

16″ MDF wreath form (or size of your choosing)

Wood rounds (20-30 for a 16″ wreath)

Greenery

Floral

Wood Glue

Picture Wire

How To

To begin, take a moment to sort the wood rounds, largest to smallest. It’s important that the sizing is evenly distributed throughout the wreath so I began by laying out my larger pieces. Slowly I filled in all the space on the wreath form. After playing with the layout a few times I finalized my layout. 

Next, I moved each round directly outside of the form and placed in on the table surface. I added a quick loop with wire so the wreath would hang easily.

Then I ran a heavy bead of glue around the wreath form. When working with wood glue I prefer to let the glue set for 3-5 minutes to allow the glue to get tacky. After the waiting time, I carefully placed each round back on the form.

I only had three extra rounds after the first layer, so I chose to add some dimension under my floral addition. Glue additional pieces on the second layer, in the same manner, using wood glue.

Once the wood was in place it was time to play with the greenery layout. After choosing a layout for my greenery, I cut the pieces to size and started working with the floral.  The hot glue I had on hand was all temp – I found that this glue was not strong enough to bond to the wood. A hot temp glue might work better. Instead, I just continued with the wood glue. The glue worked great, it was just more interesting keeping everything into position while the glue set. LOL After waiting for the 24hours for the wood glue to dry the wreath felt sturdy and ready to hang.

During the first night of this project, I just used a single rose but after letting it dry I opted for the additional roses.

This project was fun and easy to do! I especially like the sentimental factor of it being made from our Christmas tree! The perfect addition to my Valentine’s Day/Spring decor!

Let me know if you give this a try, I’d love to see yours!

xo,

C

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links in this post are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a small commission.

As the seasons change one of my favorite things to do is decorate the house. In February of 2017, we moved into our home and I have worked hard to be very picky when it comes to home decor. I really want to love the pieces we add, even if it takes time. As I pulled out the Fall/Halloween boxes this year I realized that there was an empty spot on our fireplace. Determined to find a fun item to put there I got to brainstorming – and that is how we ended up here. Time for a fun DIY – Halloween Decor project, Wooden Pumpkins!

One of my favorite stores is the Home Depot, during a recent trip I dug through the cull lumber (scrap/damaged/warped woodpile). In the cull lumber, I was able to find some 2×10 and 2×12, because cull lumber is not suited for building it is usually for sale at a deep discount. For my particular items, they were discounted 70%! 

Once I decided on my plan to make wood pumpkins I had Aaron assist me in cutting down the wood.

I cut the wood into three different sizes:

• Large Pumpkin: 12 x 16
• Medium Ghost: 10 x 12
• Small Pumpkin: 10X 12

After cutting each piece I sanded the fronts, sides and edges using 60 grit sandpaper. This cleans up the wood, cleans up the cuts and removes the markings from the factory/store.

**Be sure to sand out any paint or stamp completely before moving on. The stamp will bleed through the paint.

I used craft paint from Michales, foam brushes and paper plates. For my pumpkin colors, I mixed different combinations of orange, brown and yellow.

Once they were painted and dry it was time to move on to adding faces. Normally I would have just free handed the faces, I believe that would be just as great. But I ended up making multiple sets so I chose to make a stencil. To make the stencil I used Stencil Blanks I found at Michaels (see above).

1. Print out pictures of the faces you like.
2. Place them under the Stencil Blank and trace with a Sharpie.
3. Using a wood burner/soldering iron, cut out the design. (You can also use an Exacto knife.) 
4. Pop out inside pieces and blue tape into position on your piece.
5. Using a foam brush fill in the stencil area, being careful not to get too much paint around the edges.
6. As soon as the design is painted remove the stencil.

See traced design on the Stencil Blank.

See Soldering Iron, cutting out design.

See final design placed on painted wood.

Use blue tape to lightly position stencil. 

Allow drying for 24 hours before stacking. 

I chose to paint the backs of the pumpkins so I can use them as fall decor in addition to Halloween decor! I love dual-purpose or reversible decorations!

I do plan on adding a stem to each one, but I ran out of time. Perhaps a piece of wood or maybe even some rusty re-bar. 🤔 I love anything rusty!

Thanks for stopping by, if you try these out let me know!

Also, in making this blog I did make multiple sets.

Love the idea, but not a DIY-er? Email/DM me for details on purchasing a set!

Will ship in the US.

xo,

Carolyn