I don’t know what it is with home made stuff and me. It’s like if something CAN be made on my own, then I have a need to make it. Just to prove it to myself.
But I think it’s more than that. When I look around my home, and I see things I made, it gives me a feeling of pride. Instead of just seeing some material possession, I see something that I learned how to do and did on my own. It gives it meaning.
Plus, it makes Magoo really excited, and she keeps thanking me for making such nice things for our house, and seeing that, how could I NOT make the things on my own.
The downfall of homemade goods is the time it takes to make them. That and the fact that it normally ends up costing me more money to make things on my own than it does to buy them premade. But I found the exception to this — deco mesh.
I don’t know how I never heard of this before, but if you’re on Pinterest, you’ve probably seen it. It’s all over the “Holidays” page. It comes in long tubes, and you can find it in the Floral department of craft stores. I’ve bought three rolls so far from Hobby Lobby. Each time I went, they were 50% off, so I ended up only paying $5/roll. And one roll will make a fairly decent size string of garland or a rather large wreath.
Here’s a picture of the deco mesh while it’s rolled up. You’ll also see pipe stem cleaners (chenille stems) and floral wire, both of which are needed to make garland.
The process of making the garland and wreaths couldn’t be simpler. You gather up the mesh and attach it to the wire using the pipe stem cleaners. The only real difference between making garland and a wreath is that with a wreath, you attach the mesh to a wreath base rather than floral wire. It takes about 10 minutes to make a string of garland and just a few more minutes to make a wreath.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any “in progress” pictures to share with you, but if you would like to learn how, I used this demo, and it worked perfectly.
Here are some pictures of my wreath. I’ve made two strands of garland, but those simply don’t photograph well even though I love how they turned out.
If you try to make one of your own, please send me pictures. I would love to see them!