I wish I had remembered to take photo's of the holiday wreaths and little birds nests I made as donations for the raffle table for "Christmas in the Gardens" at our local Botanical Gardens a couple of weeks ago. They were so quick and easy and were very popular with everyone. One of the volunteers fell in love with a little bird in a nest but someone else won it so I've made her another one as a surprise. I will post a photo of that one but unfortunately with the busy Thanksgiving holiday and family in town I didn't remember to take pictures of the other things I made.
I've been volunteering at the gardens since August and one day after a storm came through we were cleaning and tidying up at the gardens and had cart loads of tillandisa (spanish moss) and bromeliads of all sizes that had blown out of the oak trees. They were going to dump it all so I asked if I could take some of it home and they said of course. I keep a rubbermaid type plastic bin in my trunk so I just threw some of it in and brought it home. One lady laughed and asked what in the world was I going to use that stuff for and I told her I was going to decorate some wreath's for donation to the raffle table. So, I brought a bunch of the tillandsia and bromeliads home and put it all in a large trash bag and sprayed garden safe insecticidal soap in the bags to kill any possible mites or bugs. I thought about using the oven but was afraid it would be too smelly and also afraid that it might catch fire so I decided on the closed bag method.
A few days later I took the moss out of the bag, found a few grapevine wreaths that were stored in a closet and my project began. I wanted to keep a couple of the wreath's natural so those were wrapped with the tillandisa and then I wired on a few bromeliads and then wrapped a natural jute ribbon around the wreath and tied a bow at the bottom. A couple of others I used red or gold ribbon and wired on sprigs of holly berries and artificial greenery, and a silk poinsettia flower. For some of the wreaths I glued a little bird nest at the base of the wreath, put a bit of the spanish moss in the nest and a tiny bromeliad, along with a little feathered bird that I picked up at a craft store.
After running out of the moss and bromeliads I ended up with one small 6" wreath and I needed to figure out what to use to decorate that one. I had some seashells that I'd collected from the beach over the years and a couple of little craft store starfish left over from a long ago project so I ended up wrapping the little wreath with sheer gold ribbon, tied a bow at the bottom and glued sea shells and starfish all around for a Florida wreath ... the first person who's raffle number was called chose that prize from the raffle table! But, the others went quickly as well.
I have a very short attention span and I'm not a very crafty person ... but with a glue gun, floral wire and a few miscellaneous items, I was able to make holiday decorations that were very popular at our raffle table. This is the little bird's nest I made for my friend:
