Re-Purpose Vegetable Arrangement into a New Wreath

Recently we had our house re-painted on the inside with a fresh new coat of a beautiful shade of light gray. This called for top to bottom cleaning and clearing out from room to room. I found this old vegetable arrangement sitting on top of the cabinets in my laundry room. Well....I didn't really "find" it there....I knew it was there and it had been catching dust for a few years I'm sorry to say. The first thing I did was take the arrangement outside with spray off with the water hose and let it dry out on the back porch. It really cleaned up well and I figured it was worth staying out of the Salvation Army box right now, but it needed a fresh new look. We decided to create a new wreath for my breakfast room and looked for something to use for our wreath base. Since we have thousands of products at Trendy Tree this usually isn't a problem, the problem comes in deciding which product to use))) We settled on a RAZ Mixed Cedar and Pine Wreath. This is a really nice wreath from RAZ that measures about 21" in diameter. It has a combination of cedar and pine twigs with about 228 tips. It makes a great wreath for the holidays with just only a bow added, but it can be useful throughout the year also. The limbs on the wreath were fluffed out to prepare the wreath for the vegetables. If you are only adding a couple of things to your wreath or just a bow, you can always just use the limbs to attach your items, but we were adding to many to do this. We removed all the pieces from the old arrangement. Some of the floral picks pulled out as we removed them. But when this happened, we just reinserted new ones. Floral picks (green wooden stems with wires) can be picked up at WalMart in the craft section. If they are too long, you can always cut the shorter with wire cutters. On the vegetables that we had to replace picks, we just hot glued a new one into the old hole. We laid out the vegetables on the wreath to get an idea of placement before attaching any to the wreath frame. We started with the largest pieces first, then medium and so on. We pretty much stuck to the above placement, but decided to put the two bunches of onions together instead of separately. The vegetables were nestled into the twigs and the floral pick pushed through to the back of the wreath. The wreath was flipped over, and the floral pick secured to the wreath frame using large zip ties (or sometimes called cable ties, also purchased at WalMart). Some pieces required two zip ties to make them secure. A couple of old wreath bows were salvaged from fresh Magnolia wreaths that we had used on the back porch earlier this spring. It's really hard to throw things away isn't it!! We used a couple of things out of this old bow. We had intended to use the gray striped ribbon, but decided against it. The stretchy wired ribbon was removed and loops were made from it and just attached randomly around the wreath. This is a great ribbon to work with. It's made of jute and in addition to being wired on the edges, it's wired throughout. It's available in 2.5" and in a 4" We also used some natural color jute roping from that old bow. The good thing about anything that is wired, you usually can just smooth it out and re-shape without any problem. The Jute Roping is an inexpensive item and we've always been able to find several uses for it - handy to have around))) We shaped the roping to resemble a poinsettia bloom and then left some long curly tails hanging. The bow was made from a leftover roll of 10" Frayed Edge Poly Jute Mesh. It seems most every time we finish up a wreath we're left with 1-2 rolls of product. A bow like this is a great way to use up those short ends. A easy way to make the curls from the wire jute roping it to wrap the roping around one of the cores from your mesh rolls. Then just slip the core out and you have an evenly shaped curl. Hang your wreath on a wall or stand and see if it looks fairly balanced. Add in extra loops or additional items as needed. We also stuck in a few white flowers from the old arrangement. Check the back of the wreath before you hang it on your wall to make sure with all the floral picks and zip ties, that you don't have anything sticking out that would scratch up your wall. This arrangement can hang year round in my breakfast room and can easily be adapted for the seasons by pulling out the white flowers and adding in a little fall touch with some small sunflowers, pumpkins or gourds. Here's the wreath hanging in my breakfast room......now all I have to do is figure out what to do with that little wicker bowl.....hmmm...could be the perfect size for toiletries in the guest bath.....bingo! Save Save Save Save