Rustic Wooden Wreath

Ok, so I realize that most of you don’t have an old small green barrel hanging around in your barn, but you could definitely re-use or recycle any other type of old wood like shutter slats, shims or lathing to create this rustic wooden wreath.

This is my kind of greenery-the kind that will last forever-despite my desperate lack of a green thumb. Case in point: this woeful poinsettia has been in my house for just a few days…

This small barrel was in pieces, and short of tossing it in the trash, I needed to come up with some useful way to use the wood.

Since it was green anyway, I figured “what the heck, I’ll make a wreath!” Here’s the how I did it:

1. The iron ring that was holding the barrel together (until it wasn’t holding the barrel together) was the perfect circular form for the wreath base. The staves had little slits at the bottom that the ring fit into. I laid them out in the circle pattern that I liked.

2. Used my trusty electric stapler to secure the ring into the slots all the way around on the back side of the wreath to form the circle.

3. Filled in the slits with hot glue all the way around, securing the iron ring into place in the slits. If your wood pieces don’t have slits, just glue into place.

4. To neaten the appearance, I cut small pieces of black foam core board and glued them into place over the glue-filled slits.

5. Since the wood pieces did not entirely cover the iron ring, I needed something to cover the gaps. Cut some burlap into small pieces and knotted in between each stave all the way around.