How to Make a Deco Mesh Wreath

Disclaimer: 1) I am not a creative guru. 2) If there is a “proper” way of doing a mesh wreath, I do not know it. 3) It will be clearly demonstrated that I am also no photographer. Shall we begin?

Not long ago I discovered God’s greatest gift to women who would like to be creative but don’t possess that gene—at least not dominantly. The gift: deco mesh. It’s a ribbon that is made very wide (about 21”) and comes in several yards (5-10 on a spool) for cheap (5-10 bucks/roll) unless you are a sucker and buy it at overpriced boutique stores for 3 times that much. Don’t do that.

If you can get your hands on a roll or two of this stuff, do it! You can make fabulous wreaths; I’ve seen these wreaths sell for $60-$100 when in actuality, your investment in it is only $10-$15!You can easily and cheaply make a wreath for every season on the calendar. Your husband will love it because it’s cheap and you’ll love it because you’ll feel like the interior designer in you just burst forth, covered in deco mesh. These are two I’ve made recently:

The example I’m providing here is a Christmas wreath, but obviously you can do any color combination to make it suit your event (baby shower, sports teams, Easter, spring, fall, etc). I feel the need to repeat my disclaimer again, but I won’t. Just go read it again……Back? Okay. Here we go…

First of all, you’ll need some sort of wreath form. They make these fancy ones that look like a rounded wire hanger with wired branches on them especially for deco mesh, but I can’t ever find those in the stores. So instead, I tried it out on a grapevine wreath. Two precisely. If you’re going to use the grapevine method, you’ll need two grapevine wreaths, one slightly smaller than the first, so that they fit inside one another like this:

You can find these for $3-$4 each at Hobby Lobby, JoAnns, Michaels…maybe even WalMart. I have no idea about the last store because it’s my life goal to go in that place as little as possible. Moving on…

Then you’ll need: floral wire ($2), scissors, approximately 9-10 yards of deco mesh. You can use two different colors (approx. 5 yds of each color) or just one color. Live on the wild side and take a pick. Then you’ll need things to decorate your wreath with: little signs for the middle of the wreath, picks of berries, balls, etc, and/or ribbon. The possibilities are endless!

Here’s what I had:

Go ahead and cut yourself lots of pieces (maybe 12-15) of 4-5 inch long floral wire to use as you make the wreath.

Let’s get started!

1. Place your smaller wreath inside your larger wreath. Pull out any huge chunks of leaves, but don’t go crazy worrying about it. You’re going to cover most of it up. You’ll see above I left most of the leaves on mine.

2. Cut a strip of floral wire, long enough to wrap around both of your wreaths, pull it taunt, and twist until tight.

3. Continue doing this 3 other times to your wreath. You’ll have a tie at 12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock and 9 o'clock. You now have a wreath form.

4. Now comes the fun part. Pull out that roll of deco mesh and pick up the end piece. Take all 21” wide and fold it into loose accordion folds or just scrunch it together.

5. We are going to attach this scrunched up mesh to the outer (bigger) wreath. Simply slide a piece of cut floral wire (4-5 inches) under a section of grapevine and bring it back up, like a U. Lay your mesh on top of that U and twist tightly. See how that’s attached? That’s how the rest of our attaching will be from here on out. If you got that part, you can make this wreath—no problem!

6. DO NOT CUT THE DECO MESH. Gather several inches of your deco mesh from the spool. I honestly don’t know how much. Just play with it and see how much is going to make a good loop when you attach the next piece. Here’s an example picture.

7. When you’ve make a decent sized loop, gather the material into a scrunch (I have no better word to use here) and place it on the outer wreath where you’d like it to go. Place a piece of your cut wire under the grapevine and back on the other side of the mesh like so….

8. And twist, twist, twist to tighten. This is what you should have now:

Your first loop!

9. DO NOT CUT THE MESH. Now we’re going to repeat the process: gather several inches of mesh, scrunch it, and place it on the INSIDE wreath this time. Place the floral wire and tighten. This is what you should have now:

10. Repeat the steps (gather mesh, scrunch it, and attach) but this time on the outer wreath.

11. Continue attaching the scrunches on the inside, then outside, then inside, outside, etc until you get back to the 12 o’clock position. It really doesn’t matter if you end back up on the outer wreath or inner wreath. Cut the deco mesh. We’re going to cover up the ugly, open stuff!

12. Pick up your second color mesh if you’re going to use it or continue with the same color. Gather it into a scrunch and attach to the wreath in an open space on your wreath. I started mine to the right of the original attachment of the green mesh. See the two attachments?

13. Here is an important step: After attaching, gather your mesh for your loop, but attach it on the INSIDE wreath this time in an open space. See the open space next to the ending green attachment? That’s where I made my first red loop end. This covers up that ugly, open space.

14. Now you are basically going to zig zag (inside, outside) that second mesh, repeating our steps (gather, scrunch, attach). Just work with the mesh to fill in any gaps. Play around with it. If you can’t go “in, out, in out” every time, but see a way to cover a “hole” and make it look good, go for it. Your wreath should eventually look something like this:

15. Cut the second mesh close to the ending floral wire to complete the mesh part of the wreath:

16. Now we’re going to add pizzazz to your wreath! If you want to add ribbon, it’s a trial and error process, kind of like the mesh (but easier!). Just attach with the floral wire and start draping the ribbon where you like it. I don’t recommend cutting the ribbon because it can look unnatural when you’re done. Just loop it around and use floral wire where needed.

Now your wreath looks like this!

17. Now add your picks. Feathers, balls, whatever. Or add your little sign in the middle. The sky is the limit! I love picks because you can just stick them into the grapevine securely. I’ve never had a problem with things falling off. My final product:

It is SO cute on the front door!

Deco mesh withstands weather really well, so it can be used indoors OR outdoors. And once you start using deco mesh, you might apply it to everything!

Any questions? Leave them in the comment box!