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If you’ve been to any craft fairs in the last few years I’m sure you’ve seen a deco mesh wreath or two for sale. While some of them are gorgeous, I’m way too cheap to pay upwards of $50 for something I can make myself. A few years ago I set out to learn how to make one. A few YouTube videos and helpful blog posts later and I had pretty much figured it out.
This year I wanted to make a new wreath to hang inside for fall. Alex made me a cute grapevine wreath for fall a few years ago that has pride of place on the porch but I didn’t have one for inside. I decided to put one together this past weekend since I was in a crafty mood. I had all the supplies on hand so this project cost me zero dollars. Those are my favorite kind of projects. 😉
The supplies I gathered are below. I didn’t think I’d use all of it but I like to keep my options open, ya know? Deco mesh wreath supplies can be bought from any craft store. Hobby Lobby has it on sale for 50% off a lot, which is usually around $5 for the long roll. If you want to buy it online, Craft Outlet has just about any color, pattern or style there is.
They also sell the work wreaths for pretty cheap too. A work wreath is just a frame that has the tips attached to wire the mesh and accessories. This is what a work wreath looks like. The brown twisty things are the tips.
If you can’t find a work wreath, a regular wire frame form will work too and you can use pipe cleaners instead. I’ve done it both ways and it works fine either way. There are different sizes for these. Be warned, the bigger you go the puffier these will be and will take up a lot of space so plan accordingly.
Take one end of your main deco mesh and pinch it together. Twist the tip (or pipe cleaner if you went that route) around the end and attach it to the tip on the outer edge of the frame. Feed out about 12 inches of deco mesh, pinch it together, and attach to the next tip.
Continue around the outer edge, feeding out 12 inches of mesh for each, ending in the tip you started in. You’ll have 2 pieces of mesh wired into that first tip.
Feed out another 12 inches and go down to the nearest tip in the inner ring. These are offset from the outer ring so it will be diagonal from where you ended on the outer part. Pinch and wire into that tip as usual and continue around the inner ring. Again, you’ll end up in the same tip you started in so you’ll have 2 bunches wired in that one. Cut the mesh. The picture I snapped after I finished the inner ring was terrible so just imagine the above pic times 2.
Deco mesh also comes in smaller 6-inch rolls and I usually use this as the 2nd color for my wreaths. Starting the same way as before, pinch the end of the deco mesh and wire it to the frame using the tips. It doesn’t really matter if you start in the same place as you did before because it’s a circle, yo. Do exactly the same thing as before. Feed out 12 inches of mesh and wire it on top of the mesh you already wired, just twisting the tips around the middle.
You could stop there and have a really pretty deco mesh wreath. You would just “fluff” out the mesh and twist the ends of the tips along the frame so they don’t show. Or you could go on and add more stuff. I like more stuff so I added some ribbon over the top of the 2nd color of mesh. Wired ribbon is the best or else it will be hard to work with.
You wire the ribbon in exactly the same way as you do the mesh. Pinch the end, attach it to the tip, go around the outside, go down to the inner ring and attach around, cut the ribbon. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, right?
I left it here because I haven’t decided if I’m done or not. I may go back and add some accessories like flowers, bows or some other type of floral arranging items. To attach those you have a few different options. If it’s lightweight, you could wire into the frame using the tips. If it’s heavier, you might try gluing a floral pick or pipe cleaner to it and insert it that way. Or you could opt to whip out the hot glue gun and attach it directly to the mesh or frame. Anything goes! Go back around the wreath after you’re done and tuck any visible ends of the tips or pipe cleaners out of sight. If there’s quite a bit left, you can wrap that around the wire of the frame which will also secure your creation even more.
To give you some ideas on how to finish a deco mesh wreath, here’s a cute Halloween wreath I did last year that was for sale in our Etsy shop.
I attached the little signs to a pipe cleaner using hot glue and then wired it to the frame. Same thing with the sign in the middle. I made the bow myself. One of these days I’ll post a tutorial on that because it is really simple. You will never buy a bow again, I promise. The dollar store is a great place to get little bits to attach to your wreath. The floral or holiday sections of craft stores would be another.
So there you have it! Demystifying the deco mesh wreath phenomenon. Now that you’ve seen how easy it is to make one of these, are you ready to attempt one of your own? Let us know in the comments!
