A few years back we pinned (along with a million others we’re sure), an adorable door garland from Marie Claire Maison Magazine (circa 2010) that had the words “C’est Noel” written in a script font using metal wire and this year we were reminded of it again on Pinterest. Since our hearts are with our friends in Paris this winter, we wanted to show support by creating something French. Since I had some leftover gold pipecleaners laying around, I thought I’d love to have that on our door (or mantle) this year. And as I attempted to make it, we thought, wouldn’t it be nice as a tree or wall garland as well. And so the adventure began.
Materials Needed
Gold (or silver) pipecleaners
Thick florist wire
Glue gun
Gold (or silver) string (not shown)
For the door or mantle wreath using floral wire and pipe cleaners:
Step 1. Using the floral wire, start to spell out the word “c’est”. Don’t worry about the accent yet that sits between the c and the e, we will add that later. So for this, the easiest way to create a script using a floral wire is to just think that you’re writing it, and just bend the wires the way you would actually write in script normally. Step 2. Since the wires are not one continuous wire, you’ll have to connect the pieces together. We tried to do that at convenient places (like the “t”). Step 3. If you have leftover wire, snip off the end using a wire snippers. Step 4. Using a glue gun, glue the pipecleaner onto the floral wire, tracing the shape of each letter.
Step 5. Tie a string on both ends of each word from the letters to connect to a long piece of pipecleaner wire. One long piece of pipecleaner for each word. To add the punctuation or accents, simply snip off a short piece of pipecleaner and tie it with string and hang directly over each applicable letter.
For the garland using pipecleaners (only):
This is the fun one! Choose a quote or Christmas Carol. Using the pipecleaners only, start to form the pipecleaners into the script fonts of each word, adding on pipecleaners (by twisting them together) as you go to create one continuous phrase. We chose “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” by Nat King Cole. The trick to this is to use lower case letters only (just makes it flow better), and form the letters the way you would normally write them when you use a pen. Continue through until you have enough garland for the project. As you can see with our 7 foot noble fir, this took a lot of words. But we love it! We took some pictures of the tree before we added the other decorations, just to see it stand out for this post. (More finished tree pictures to come).
We quite love it! Also would be nice as gift tags or place settings!
