DIY Pottery Barn Knock-Off Christmas Garland

I’m finally getting around to taking down Christmas decorations. Yes, it is already late January, but I was on travel quite a bit between now and Christmas so am just now getting around to it. Besides, I love Christmas decorations, and haven’t been in a huge hurry to pull them down. So I know I’m way late, but I still wanted to share/document some of the Christmas stuff I made this year.

One of my big Christmas projects this year was to make some garland to wrap around the columns in front of our house. I love this garland from pottery barn, but at $109 for two 5′ garlands (I wanted about 4 10′ garlands – which would be around $400, and they aren’t even lit) I knew I’d be making my own. I already had a big box of 100+ red and silver ornaments Martha Stewart ornaments I’d bought on sale after Christmas last year, and had a ton of Christmas lights leftover from our wedding, so all I needed was (4) garlands. I found some good quality 9′ garlands on sale at JoAnn’s for $5 each, and also got some floral wire (like this). I grabbed two 20′ strings of Christmas lights, and attached them to the garland (two 9′ garlands per string of lights with about a foot in between to go between the columns on my porch) with pieces of the floral wire, using them like twist ties. I just laid them out on my kitchen table, stretched the lights out along the garland, and fastened them on. (Please ignore the dead bushes in front of our house)

I spaced the ornaments about 5″ apart. I tried attaching the ornaments before putting the garland around my columns, but found it much easier to hang up the garland and then attach the ornaments, using pieces of floral wire again. This way I got to make sure they hung nicely and put the prettiest ornaments in the front of the house. And then I got a wreath at Michael’s (on sale too!) and put some of the leftover ornaments on it too.

I only spent about $20 out of pocket for the garlands, but even if you wanted to get lights and simple ornaments, its still a great deal over the pottery barn garland! Also, while I was taking pictures of the garland outside, I also played around with my camera some and got some fun bokeh pictures. Mabye I’ll do a tutorial on that later too?