Decorating our home for the holidays is never an easy task for us. We don’t want to spend a fortune on holiday decor, and our house has a bit of an unconventional shape – it has its odd spots, weird corners and difficult areas more than most houses would have. Our portico is one of those areas. Besides being really big and high which would need twelve 6-foot garlands to cover it from one end to the other, with a slightest wind anything you hang there flies away, so I need a heavy duty garland if I want it to stay in place. But, you know what? Despite all its weird corners and odd areas, we love our home, because it is our first house ever! Therefore, instead of complaining about it, we always try to make it work for us, which usually means coming up with weird solutions – like repurposing a faux Christmas tree into an outdoor Christmas garland, :-D.
As you may remember, our latest Put & Take find was a faux Christmas tree. Greg didn’t want to take it, as the note on the box said it had some missing parts. Thinking that a branch or two might be missing, we took it home. Then came the slow realization, LOL…
H: You see, I was right. It’s only missing some branches. Not a big deal!
G: Awesome, my Babes!
H: (shortly after) Oh!?!…
G: Wassup?
H: Yeah…I think it is also missing the main body….I mean the trunk…oh well, I guess I can work with that.
G: It’s okay, my Babes…
H: (shortly after) Really??? Bummer!! (The branches were two different types. They definitely didn’t belong to the same tree.)
Now what to do??… While Greg and Barish were having a great laugh and yammering on about Charlie Brown’s scrawny tree, I was waiting for a light bulb to switch on over my head. And oh boy! Did it light ever so bright! I was going to repurpose the faux Christmas tree to an outdoor Christmas garland.
With the idea, I immediately got to work, and not only did I make a lovely outdoor Christmas garland from it, but also two clip-on Christmas swags for our garage, and a faux 8-foot-tall Alpine Christmas tree for our living room. After making all that, I still have more than enough branches to make some small pathway trees, two big kissing balls and a couple more swags. I guess when I finish the rest, I will also be helping Greg and Barish to pick their jaws up from the floor. LOL.
Now, are you ready to see how I made all these thingsfrom a box of faux pinebranches?Excellent! But let me warn you, this is rather a long post, since it has3-posts-worth of tutorials in it.Although I can only fit one of them here on Hometalk, you can find all three on our blog post.
Luckily, one type of the branches had a color code depending on the length and the size of the branch, so before doing anything, I started grouping them according to their color codes. Then I picked the group thathad the most branches. I also grabbed3 packs ofDollar Store garland(cheap single-line pine garland – 1$ each)and all theold Christmas lights Mom and Dad gave to us.
First, I started opening and flattening the branches, as shown in the picture below.
Then,I started bending the end of the steelstemswiththe help of a black steel pipeto give them a hook shape.
Next, I placed them on top of each otherin a way to haveeach branch pointing the opposite way – do you see picture below? The reason for each branch pointingthe opposite waywas so I could have a connection point to link every piece to each other.
After positioning them correctly, I started wrapping theDollar Storepine garlandto tie the two branches to each other. Since I was at it, Icarried on wrapping it also to the areas where the steel stem was showing.
Once I prepared a good number of these pieces,I started connecting the piecesby hooking them to each other. To secure the connection points, Greg bent those hooks even more.[They weren’t screwing around when they made this tree. Those steel stems are strong! Even with pliers, I pulled a muscle at the base of my thumb and couldn’t close my hand for the next day. Of course, that was after clamping a whole bunch shut. But I missed my daily quota and had to go to bed without supper. Poor me. – Greg]
Whenall the connection points were secured, I again wrapped themwith a single line of cheap garlandjust to hide the steel hooks, and with that the main structure of the garland was basically finished.
{ If so far it all sounds a bit confusing then hop over to our blog to see the process pictures. All these three tutorials have step-by-step photo instructions on our blog post. }
To make them look better, I started wrappingthe Christmas lightsonto the branches, then I embellished the garlands with ared deco poly mesh ribbon I bought from Walmart. It was really so easy to hang myDIY garlands with the hook-shaped ends. Greg just put one screw on each of the vertical faces andhooked the garlands on those screws. That’s how easy it was!I didn’t even have to move a muscle :-D
Here is our DiY Outdoor Christmas Garland!
Can you believe that this was a faux Christmas tree at one point? Pretty amazing how everything can get repurposed if we are willing to give some time and love to it!
After the DiY outdoor Christmas garland I started making my DiY Clip-on Christmas swags. As I don’t have enough picture space (we can only put up to 15 pictures here) I couldn't put the full tutorial of it here on Hometalk. But you can find the tutorial of the swags on our blog post.
However, I will show you how easy it is to hang these swags: all you do is pull the two stems, place the swag and let the go of the stems (as shown in the picture below.) Pretty easy, right?
Here how it looks on our garage lanterns :-)
From the same box of branches I also made an 8-foot DiY Alpine Christmas tree.
You can find the FULL TUTORIAL for this tree on our blog post, including the lighted star's tutorial.
Oh yes, even that star is DiY :-D
Here is the 8-foot DIY Alpine Christmas tree in it's full glory. I hope you liked how I repurposed a box of faux Christmas tree branches.
If you are interested in Christmas and winter projects, click on the link below to see more Christmas and winter projects from The Navage Patch.
Thanks for reading!
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Handan, xo
