Holiday Garland

Holidays are wonderful...and expensive.  My goal this holiday season is to save money where ever possible by being the best crafter I can be.  I am working on DIYs for presents but also for decorations. The stores blow up with decorations galore and it's easy to get lost in a sea of ornaments, bows, bags, garlands, and lights.  

Ever walk into the holiday section at

Walmart this time of year? Like drowning.

So in my endeavor to craft decorations I hit the dollar store. I don't know why I don't go there more. Almost all things I could buy for 5 dollars I can instead buy for 1 dollar. So anyways, I found a dollar store tree garland and decided this is what I need to complete my window decoration.  

(I didn't take a picture of the garland in its true self because I'm bad at planning ahead.) 

I made this garland for $1.00 and stuff I had around the house. Total overall cost is less than five. 

And here's how you do it.

I used: 

• Bouquet wire ( mine was green and left over from making wedding bouquets but any wire will do)
• Artifical Christmas flowers from the church "get rid of all our old Christmas stuff" sale. ($1) I used about 10 of them. 
  
• Burlap looking ribbon that I saved from last year's Christmas gifts. I tied three pieces together for the length. 
• Two fake pinecones from dollar store.
• Christmas ornaments ( I just took em from the tree) 

Now my first plan was just to randomly tie on flowers to the garland and call it a day. This is what happened. 

Not a day. Not great. 

So clearly something had to be done.

I took it down, collected my ribbon, and got to work.

• Start by securing your flowers to the garland with your wire. Put as many or as few as you want in whatever intervals. I put mine about eight inches apart and used maybe 10. 

Now skip the step where I put it up and saw how sad it looked, and move on to the following: 

• Folding the garland in half, tie one end of your ribbon to the middle. 
• Now twist the garland around itself and leave some gaps for the ribbon. 
• Weave the ribbon in and out of the garland with no particular plan or pattern.

• When you get to the end of the garland twist it together and tie the ribbon on at the end to secure it. 
• Cut remaining ribbon or tie in a bow and let hang. (Would've done if I had more)
• Take two seperate, equal pieces of ribbon and tie each into a bow to decorate either end.
• Wrap pinecones into the bow.
• Secure onto each end of garlnd with wire.

•  With my ribbon in place and my pine cones attached I put up the garland by hanging it from the curtain rod. (Very professional stuff going on over here.)
• Place ornaments throughout sparingly. 

I used icicle ornaments (3 on either side.)

And a matching regular gold in the middle. 

Don't overwhelm your garland ( I mean, unless that's what you're going for) it's not a second Christmas tree.

And in case you hate to scroll up. Here's the finished garland. 

I'm really happy with the results.
Hope this will help in whatever DIY Christmas quest you may be pursuing. 

Have fun!