Homemade Christmas Decorations

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I decided that I ought to change the title for this one, the result was definitely not a homemade Christmas wreath even ‘decoration’ might be stretching it :o)

I started by removing all the thorns from the rose hip branches and trimming any branches which didn’t have nice red berries on them. Taking the thorns off took a while but I’m sure it would have been more painful to leave them on.

Trimmed and de-thorned rose hip

I start attaching holly to the thin end of the rose hip, intending to add layers of holly as I progressed. At this point the thin end (left in the picture) was still going to be the bottom of the decoration.

I left the holly leaves on at the ends of the branches and removed them further up so I could tie the holly to the rose hip. As I added more holly it got bushier and I wished I’d picked holly with straighter branches; the bent branches sent leaves off all over the shop.

The beginnings

I carried on tying about 6 branches of holly to the rose hip and it was getting more and more difficult (and painful) to attach the holly. I stopped to take a look at how it was progressing and where I wanted more holly. I noticed that hanging it the way I had intended would show the backs of the holly leaves, not the nice glossy fronts I wanted to be on display. It needed to be hung upside down!

Having already diverged quite a way from my original intent and with scratched hands I decided on an easy solution (cop out?).

We now have a very well tied together vase of holly – not what I had in mind to start with I’m afraid :(

Festive but not what I had in mind

So, not a roaring success, and a lot of effort to put some branches in a vase. Fortunately there are more creative members than me – check out Spritz’s blog about making a Christmas wreath from holly if you want to see how it should be done!

When I was going through the holly, I did find a half rotted leaf which I thought looked interesting.

Holly leaf skeleton

Happy Christmas :o)

• 21 Dec, 2007
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