No mantle? No problem! This DIY Christmas decoration goes to show that you can get the stockings and fireplace look anywhere you have a shelf.
To us, nothing says the holidays like seeing stockings over a warm fireplace – and no cozy Christmas fireplace would be complete without a pretty garland.
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This five-minute DIY gives maximum holiday feels for the minimum time, materials, and cost. You can put a versatile arrangement like this together using things you probably already have around the house and can place it on a shell, a cabinet, over a door, anywhere!
We got the idea for this after seeing a Victorian-style lantern in a high-end store. It was gorgeous but super expensive, so we were inspired to put something similar together for cheaper.
Here’s how we styled ours – no fireplace required!
You will need:
A garland
Any foliage garland, will do and it doesn’t have to cost you anything. We already had a 6’ artificial Fraser Fir garland from Balsam Hill which made sense to use for this project. However, if you don’t have one, you can use scavenged fresh foliage instead – plus it will bring that lush, green pine smell into your home. (Find more tips on using fresh foliage in decorating here)
This better value garland would also work beautifully
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Centerpiece
We already had the IKEA Borrby lantern, which gave us the idea for this project. We were using it as an outdoor dining centerpiece in the summer so it was great to repurpose it for winter.
The lantern is the focal point for a soft winter glow, but there are so many things you could use as a centerpiece instead. Think about an arrangement of Christmas ornaments in a vase or bowl, holiday candy, one of your favorite pictures in a frame, a decorative sign, or anything you feel like.
Ribbon
The original lantern had some super cute holly and ivy leaf picks wrapped around it, but we didn’t have any of these around so decided to go for a slightly more minimal look. To keep the holiday feel, we tied some spare red ribbon around the lantern in a cute bow. You could also tie more ribbons onto the foliage garland.
Candles
We used a mixture of cheap plain pillar candles, (which were originally from IKEA) for our DIY Christmas decoration. We don’t recommend lighting real candles due to the risk of catching and wanting to avoid a waxy mess. But you can use a set of LED candles instead. Look out for LED candles that come with a timer so you can have them come on at the same time each day without switching them on.
An LED candle sits inside the lantern to give some illumination to the middle, which is on a daily timer.
We recommend this LED candle set
Flameless LED candles
We always seem to have an abundance of battery pack string lights and these came in really handy to weave into the foliage for more light and sparkle throughout. Choose ones on a wire so you can bend and place them exactly where you want.
Pinecones
The beauty of this project is that you can add in whatever you like, so whilst this garland was minimal, we added some gold spray painted pinecone tree ornaments for a bit of glitz.
Pinecones are another item you could forage for at this time of year if you don’t already have some – just make sure anything natural is fully dried out before use. If you are using ornaments with strings, just tuck the strings into the foliage of the garland so they’re out of sight.
Putting it together and tips:
Firstly decide where to place the garland: In our dream home there’d be a beautiful log fire to set it above, but for now, we’re making do with the shelving over a TV cabinet. We also think this would look great in an entryway, by a window, as a dining table runner, over a doorway, on a bookshelf – the list goes on!
Pine Branches
Luckily the 6’ garland was exactly the right size to fit on the cabinet. If you need to hold any part of the garland up, use clear Command hooks – but we wouldn’t recommend this to support the entire weight of the garland (if you mounted it on a wall for instance) due to the weight.
Place the garland first and then layer items on in turn. We went in the order of garland – string lights – lantern – candles, and then dot the pinecones around last.
The key is to style the items in turn so you can add and remove until you have the look you want. You could go all out adding lots of different textures and colors to this.
If you have a long length of string lights (double the length of the garland for instance), then wrap the lights around the full length of the garland as the first step so they’re evenly spaced. We only used a short length of lights, so we laid it on top and used the wire to twist them around individual branches. Do this step with the lights on so that you can see what the finished result will look like.
Arrange the battery packs of the string lights so that they are behind the branches of the garland and out of sight, you can tape them down with clear tape if needed.
We were was able to lay all the items amongst the branches of the garland and tuck them inside when needed. This works brilliantly for a DIY Christmas decoration as we can take everything apart after the holiday and use it for something else.
If you need to attach items to the garland to make them stay, or want to make a more permanent garland to take out every year, place things where you want them, and then use either cable ties, craft wire, or a hot glue gun to hold them.
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We kept this look minimalist, but you could style this any way you choose with lots of holly and berries, more lights, Christmas ornaments, candy canes, nutcrackers, by hanging stockings from the edge, or trying a different centerpiece.
We always dot a few of these throughout
Fir Scentsicles Ornament Sticks
And that’s it! This DIY Christmas decoration is so simple and easy: anyone can put this together for minimal budget and maximum impact – we hope it inspired you!
What’s your favorite holiday decorating style? – Let us know in the comments!
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