22 Responses to Make Your Own Garland for less than $5!

  1. Love this!! I finally put our garlands up on our front porch, and I have some leftover that I was thinking of putting on the bannisters. I’m definitely going to add real branches, though. I can just imagine the smell! Mmmmm… Christmas!

  2. Merideth, this is absolutely beautiful! What a great idea! When I was a small child, I had many allergies. Therefore, I was never able to enjoy real greens in my home at Christmas time. Now that I am grown and (mostly) have my allergies under control, I am looking to try something like this. Probably won’t happen this year, but maybe next… :) Thanks for the inspiration!

  3. Makes me miss our old house in So. Ca where we had a banister for me to decorate, so much fun. Every year I did something different. Your banister looks so pretty, love how you combined embellishments and extra real branches to fill it out. Way to go. It’s so much fun figuring out how to enhance what you have, coming up with ideas, seeing how to make them work. You’ll have so much deciding what to do next year. You did a wonderful job, how wonderful to have a new house to decorate. Hope your holiday is healthy and happy as can be. Merry Christmas

    • Hi Peggy, I actually don’t recall having much of an issue with sap last year. Maybe it’s because the clippings sat on my front porch for a week or so before I used them, so they weren’t freshly cut? I also used smaller clippings of the branches, so I wasn’t dealing with the larger branches that tend to be more full of sap.

  4. Did you have a problem with “shedding” of the needles? I used real clippings in the past and the cleanup was terrrrrible!! Any tips?

    • Yes, I think it’s probably unavoidable :-/ I’ve heard you can spritz the greens with water and that helps them to not dry out so quickly, but I haven’t tried it. I just put the branches into a garbage bag and then vacuum up all the needles on the stairs – definitely messy but not that hard to clean up as long as I keep my kiddos from walking through and tracking needles everywhere, haha.

  5. Hello,
    Popped in from Pinterest. Enjoyed your tutorial. Great way to use the trimmings from trees and your own yard instead of straight into a burn pile, compost pile or heaven forbid, trash. My only cringe was when you said you’d dump the whole thing because you only spent a few bucks. I get that. I know folks are busy. I know it takes time to keep things “company” ready and who has time to pull out all those individually wired branches, right? Except that there a number of reasons not to just dump the whole thing.
    Landfill issues
    Throwaway society
    Recycling/reusing

    I won’t belabor the point. It was not intended to be an affront to your methods, your person or anything else. I am just hoping you will consider a mindset from your grandparents or great grandparents generation. “Use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without.” You started on the right path. Making a beautiful home for your family and friends while staying on a budget. That is awesome. Really commendable. Just finish out the idea. Take it apart at the end of the season. Save the florist wire for next year along with the cheap-o garland. Show your family…children that is, what it is to be frugal and to care about the planet…their inheritance, at the same time.
    Truly, not meant to be harsh or critical…just thoughtful. Please accept it in the spirit in which it was shared.
    Thank you for your kind consideration,
    A Random Reader

    • I agree a great idea apart from the advice to just bin the whole lot at the end of the season. Not good for the environment, let’s all try to be more thoughtful and spend that little bit of time removing the adornments so we can reuse materials the following year. My cheap-o garlands have been reused for five years now and are still going strong. I use fresh Christmas tree clippings combined with adornments which I have collected over the years, so each year it looks a little different. Remember, just because it’s cheap, does not mean you can just chuck it away.

    • We usually get our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, so the greens are fresh cut then…but they stay outside in the winter temperatures for about a week after that until I get to my garland. They’ve always stayed green until I take them down around New Year’s, though by then they’re pretty dry and brittle.

  6. Instead of wire on wooden railing I put wired ribbon and tied the garland in to the staircase and make bows. It’s dual purpose. Love it

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stay-at-home mom to three beautiful children, wife to an incredible husband, and daughter of a loving God. I freely admit that I am not always the most creative or original person when it comes to crafting, decorating, organizing, cooking, etc...but I love being inspired by great ideas and putting my own spin on them! Look around, stay a while, and I hope through my *unoriginality* I can provide some inspiration to you, too!
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