Dramatic Driftwood Wreath

I loved my summertime succulent wreath. It hung wonderfully, and didn’t fade, droop, or melt out of shape in the extreme heat in the cavern of fire which formed every morning between that pretty all-glass storm door and the eggplant-painted entryway door. Thank you, sunshine.

But now we’re encroaching on autumn, and as my almost-martha-stewart-mom would do, I’m packing the succulent wreath away until next spring and replacing it with something more seasonally appropriate.

I didn’t want to go full-on-autumnal quite yet, and I’ve never been much into the faux-colored leaves decor, but the fresh green succulents (or anything green, flowery) seems a little too springy for the cool nights (which are an awesome relief, by the way). The new wreath, I decided, would take advantage of totally-free driftwood from the local beach (you know, the same I pulled all of this beach glass from, and found the future base of this driftwood lamp on).

After all… many of the smaller pieces left behind as useless (or from campfires) could be arranged nicely to, you know, take on a not-so-surprising wreath shape.

I kind of liked the idea of doing a square wreath. Nice thought, bad in trial. I’m a square-wreath lover at heart, just not in a driftwood-y execution.

Not with my supply, at least. Not even this way, which is a little bit o’ circle, a little bit o’ square.

I had a few different ideas of how to assemble the circle of different sized sticks.

Plan A (formulated even before I went to find my natural beachy materials) involved drilling through each and stringing a wire to connect them. Luckily I realized that would going to be a challenge, and probably sloppy too. Plus, I was looking for a finished wreath that looked more lush and layered than a singular strand of driftwood.

Plan B that crossed my mind was buying an embroidery hoop, and gluing the wood pieces to that. Good, you know, because it’s perfectly round. Bad though, because there’s not a whole lot of surface to actually glue to. Potential for driftwood floppiness.

The easiest (and free!) plan C was to create my own hoop using a piece of scrap MDF that was leftover from when I assembled the built-in shelves. Pete’s idea, actually. After all, the piece I found (covered in dog fur and possibly basement mold) was a good size for the front door. I used a round dining plate to mark off where I would need to cut (using the jigsaw, awesome).

Again, awesome in idea, poor in reality. Maybe a factor of the jigsaw blade that I was using, or maybe because MDF is harder to cut through than diamonds, but it took me about 10 minutes to carve out half of the circle. I knew I needed to find something more usable before I had a right-arm-only popeye bicep from forcing the saw through the material. Plan C was axed but quickly replaced by Plan D, to use a piece of thin plywood that I found hidden in the basement.

The plywood thankfully cut like butter compared to the MDF, although maybe my new bicep is owed that credit. In any case, from the minute I found the plywood in the basement to when I snapped this next photo of the finished ring, only about 2.5 minutes had passed.

The driftwood was slowly attached to the totally-free-and-DIY’ed and sanded down wreath ring with plain ol’ hot glue.

Once it was all secured and dried, I did flip it over and reinforce those little pieces of driftwood further with hot glue along the back. Couldn’t hurt, right? So now, I think it should really withstand any door shutting and whatever wind-blowing it encounters.

I’m especially happy with how the layered pieces present in person; much nicer than a single ring of driftwood would have worked out. Plus, the added layers disguise the wooden ring completely.

When it came to hanging it on the door, I made another one of those simple wire hooks (like I did once before with the old wreath), so it lays comfortably and securely against the door.

The concern had been (briefly) that if I tried to hang the wreath directly on the wooden ring, pieces of wood would rest unnaturally against the door and possibly pop the hot glue out of place. Never know, that was just my gut instinct, so a less forced and tight hook helps to hold the weight of the wreath in it’s final home.

If you don’t have access to driftwood, I think this would look fantastic with natural tree branches chopped to length. I think I’ve probably seen something like that on Pinterest before, so search around if you want.

If you figure out how to make a nice square wreath, I want to see it!