Christmas Mantle Decorating Ideas

Ready to learn how to create a beautiful Christmas mantle for the holidays? I'm going to show you step by step. I promise it's not that hard, so stay tuned. Let me give you two tips about adding the garland to your mantle. The first one is fluff, fluff, fluff that garland. And when you fluff it, kind of pull it over the mantle a little bit. The second thing is, I don't, I have to have two pieces of garland, so I don't stop it exactly in the middle. I come over about five inches, so that when I bring that second piece over, it looks really full in the middle. I use two candle holders on my mantle during the holidays. And this is the time, if you're going to do that, that you want to go ahead and put it on your mantle before we do anything else to the mantle. And let me tell you a little trick I use. It's called poster tack. I take a really small piece and I put it up under my candle holder, push it down, and that just gives me added security, so that candle holder doesn't plummet off my mantle when I'm working on it. After you have your candle holder in there secure, go ahead and kind of pull the greenery around the candle so it looks nestled in there. And then it's time to add the lights. Fun. Okay, so here's a little trick I do with my lights. Before I really start winding it into the garland, I start it at one end and then I find the end, stick that there for a second, come all the way across, and I end it on the other side. And that way I know how much I have to weave in and out instead of starting on one side and ending up with too many lights on this side or too little lights. Now the second thing, when you're adding your lights to your garland, it takes a little extra time, but you really want to wind it into your garland, hiding the wire. It tears up a girl's hands, but it'll make it look a lot better. We're going to add so much more to this garland. One of my first years, my daughter-in-law's both were helping me grow my tree and I had all the stuff laid out that we were going to add to the tree. And one of my daughter-in-laws said, well, how much are we adding to the tree? All of it. So hang in there. We're going to have some fun with this garland and add a lot more. So we're going to add picks to the garland. We're going to add ribbon and we're going to add flowers and cute little birds. But next, we're going to add the ribbon. And you're going to add the ribbon before you add all the picks because the picks just sit in there and trying to wind the ribbon around, you're going to knock them loose. So this is the ribbon I'm doing for the spaniel. This is kind of a plaid in green. This is a brown ribbon and a little bit wider of a gold ribbon. So I'm going to start with the plaid and I don't do one continuous piece of ribbon. I break it up because for me, it just makes it easier to handle. The one on the bottom, the one that's going to show, I want you to cut that ribbon at an angle really neatly like so. So I have that piece cut. I'm going to start with one side of the garland. As many years as I've decorated, I don't know why, I still find adding ribbon probably the most difficult thing for me because I don't know if I'm overly picky about how it's getting weaved in or out. So if you feel like it's a little frustrating to you, I'm with you. But that's okay. We're going to do it and it'll look good. So I'm going to start with that piece right there. Come around the pine cone. Kind of you don't want that ribbon to be tight. You really want it to be loose like so. And I'm adding three ribbons so I don't have to get overly picky. And there I am covering up some of the wire for the Christmas lights, which is perfect. And then I'll just tuck that piece in right there where you can't tell I've got it trimmed. And I'm going to continue across with this ribbon and then I'm going to do the gold ribbon and then the brown ribbon. Okay. All right. Got the plaid done. Quick little thing about ribbon. I love ribbon that looks the same on both sides, especially when you're doing garland because when it flips and turns, it looks great. This gold ribbon isn't the same on both sides, but it cost me six bucks. So I'm going to work with it. You're going to do the same thing. You don't have to follow the same exact pattern. Kind of weave in differently from where you did your first ribbon. So let me show you a little trick I do because sometimes I just, I do, I get frustrated with how the ribbon's looking in the garland. And if to me, if I just see it everywhere, it doesn't quite look right. I really like it to just kind of peekaboo out from the garland. So what I'll do is I'll take some floral wire and I'll try to make almost like a little loop and twist it on there like so, and then tuck it in to the green ring and then continue about, you know, another 12 inches and maybe I'll do another one. Because this ribbon is a little difficult to work with. It's a little testy. So see how it makes just a pretty loop? And then I'm going to wind the rest of that in and tuck it in where you don't see it. And it'll look a lot better. Okay, I feel like I have a pound of glitter all over me. Oh my goodness, it's all over the floor. I have one of those vacuums that has the clear cylinder in the front. By the time I'm done Christmas decorating, it looks like a beautiful snow globe. All right, the last one is the brown. Repeat the same process. Before I add sprigs to the garland, I made two huge bows that I'm going to put on each end of the mantle. Now, I think making bows is easier than adding ribbon to the garland. I have a video on how to make bows. If you're not sure how to do it, I promise it's easy. When I made my bow, I used floral wire and I made sure I had plenty left over because that's how I'm going to attach it to the garland. One bow on this side of the mantle and one on the other. I have the bows added and I think they are looking beautiful. Now, the fun part to me is adding the sprigs, more ornaments, the little birds. But really, this is beautiful just like it is. If you want to stop here, you just go right ahead. But I'm going to start adding some stuff. Now, this is a floral stem. It isn't in the pick aisle. It's in the floral aisle. You're going to want to get some clippers and snip different pieces off and start adding it to your garland. The great thing about artificial garland is usually you can just stuff these right in and they'll stay put. These have little red berries on them and some frosted looking branches. I love how it adds just another layer of texture to the garland. And let me show you something I want to do above the bows real quick. So, I want to create a little bit of drama above the bow. I have this branch which has frosted icicles and this branch which is all silver and glittery. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to snip that top piece off. And man, you have to have muscles to do this. And I'm going to tuck that in. I want to do some of the silver. Same thing. Oh, it just creates drama. I love it. And then I have two of these which did come from the pick aisle and I'm going to stick those on top. Okay, I got a little sidetracked with the bow and I'm going to go back to putting the beautiful floral snips that I did in. I went ahead and snipped them all at one time so I can save a little bit of time. So, this is a picture of the little birds that I planned on putting on the mantle. Gwen took a coffee break and this is what I came back to. Did you do that, Molly? Okay, I have to show you this one ornament I found at the craft store in the aisle with the individual hanging ornaments not in a box. How lovely is that? I'm going to put that right in there. I've got my three ornaments onto my floral wire and I'm just going to attach it right here. I'm going to attach it to whatever I find. I've already got a few more to do. Thank you for watching. I'm sorry some animals were hurt in the filming of this video. Molly and I will be talking about that later. Be sure to subscribe to my channel and I hope you have a fabulous holiday. I tripped already.