Make This DIY Lit Up Festive Native Garland For Your Kitchen

30 Dec

I just love this time of the year, everything feels so festive! The weekends are filling with gatherings and events, work is starting to wind down and I am so looking forward to taking a few weeks off to rest and recharge. I plan to sleep and eat loads, and hopefully spend lots of days at the beach if La Niña behaves. To decorate our home last Christmas, I made a DIY Native Leaf Garland for our back deck. This year I want to bring the festive cheer inside give my festive native garland a glow up in our kitchen.

This Christmas I'm making the garland a little differently; last year I used florist wire and a staple gun to make the garland arrangement. This year I am using leftover chicken wire from my DIY Festive Floral Hanging Arrangement as the structure (it's so easy to use and very cheap!). I also added a little holiday sparkle with DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments, pink flowers (to go with my pink and green Christmas theme for 2021) and fairy lights to create that extra festive moment. Read on to make your own Festive Native Garland for your kitchen. It's so easy!

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Materials

Greenery and flowers (either from your garden, your neighbours or bought from a local florist)
Chicken wire from Bunnings
Christmas ornaments (I made 9 different DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments this year!)
Fairy lights from Bunnings

How To

Assemble the materials and make sure to keep your greenery and flowers in water. You won't necessarily need to do this if you've just cut the greenery.

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Start by cutting and shaping the chicken wire into your desired length and shape it into a tube. The width of the chicken wire is 1m so I made three, and joined them together in one long 3m piece.

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Place the chicken wire structure in the place you want it to be in your kitchen (or over your sideboard, mantel, coffee table or console). Refer to this video for the steps.

Start by poking the green branches into the wire at either end and keep twisting, moving and editing until the chicken wire is mostly hidden and the greenery is full and lovely. This is your "background". Layer by adding the flowers, Christmas tree ornaments and fairy lights. Keep editing until you are happy. You could easily find yourself tweaking and changing things around non stop, so don't stress to much. Once you're happy, leave it and don't be tempted to keep tweaking.

Extra tips

Showcase the different profiles of the flowers you're using. Don't feel like you always need to place them front on. Pointing them down and so you can see their side profile adds another dimension to the floral hanging installation.
Don't be afraid to edit, and edit some more. That's part of the fun! But be careful not to let it make you go crazy.
Garlands don't need to be symmetrical. Play with heights, create drama and have fun!

Ta daaaaa! A gorgeous festive moment in your kitchen.

I am so happy with this festive DIY Native Garland. It looks so gorgeous in our kitchen and since we spend so much time in this space, it's really created such a cosy atmosphere. I love that I used every single cutting from our garden! It was a true pleasure being able to create this moment of total joy, creatively problem solve how best to approach this DIY, and work with beautiful flowers and greenery foraged from my own garden.