December 8, 2013

Make A Deco Mesh Garland


Deco mesh garlands are easy to make and can be adapted 
to any occasion or colors that you want.  They are also 
inexpensive and give a lot of bang for the buck. 

You can make your own base for the garland out of 
aluminum wire (found at Michael's or Dollar Tree) and
pipe cleaners (here's a tutorial for that). This year Hobby
Lobby has pre-made bases for deco mesh garlands that
are very inexpensive (especially when they are on sale or
purchased with a coupon) in Christmas colors so I 
wanted to try using what florists call "work garlands".

Here are the supplies that were purchased to make a 
garland to go around my front door and co-ordinate with
a traditional style deco mesh wreath (tutorial here).
oops! Actually I didn't add the deco tubing before I took the pictures at the end.

The purchased work garland has tinsel "arms" to hold the 
deco mesh in place.  The work garland has to be unfolded
and straightened out.

The tinsel arms also have to be spread open. 

These work garlands are 9.5 feet long. 
 Two of them joined together with floral wire were long
 enough to go around most of the frame of my front door.
  Another option would have been to first put the deco
 mesh on each  garland and then join them together...
which might have been easier in retrospect. 

The work garland's wire can be easily cut if you want 
to make a shorter garland. 

Since I want "tails" on each end of the garland, I 
left some extra deco mesh unbunched before the first
section of mesh was added to the wire work garland.

Gather the mesh width-wise.  I think that gathering/bunching 
the mesh in a sort of accordion pleat fashion gives good poufs.

Use the tinsel arms to secure the pleated mesh to the wire by
twisting the tinsel tightly on top of the gathered pouf.


One thing that I was disappointed about the purchased work
garland is that the space between the tinsel arms was not 
consistent.  Some spaces were 6", 7" or 8" apart.  So I kind
of had to "eyeball" how much deco mesh to move down
the roll to make a nice pouf for the next attachment point.

Use enough mesh to make a pouf similar to this as you 
move along the wire attaching mesh:

This is such a long garland that it took more than
one roll to complete it.  For planning purposes, I would
say that for each nine feet of garland, you need one roll
of 30' mesh. Not all rolls are that long so note the length
when you are buying the mesh. 

To stop one roll and add another one, you need to hide
the ends of the mesh...they are raggy-looking.

Leave enough "tail" on each end of the mesh that you can
stuff the ends to the backside of the garland and up into
the back of a finished pouf.  It just makes the pouf look fuller.

Here is the garland with the red mesh attached:

You don't have to add another layer of mesh but if
you want to, simply attach the second layer on top
of the first one with the tinsel arms...they are long
 enough to hold on another layer.

You can make the second color's poufs go on top of the
first pouf, or, if you want both colors to show well, put
the second color kind of to the side of the first color
as you make and attach the second layer. 

Deco mesh garlands are very lightweight.  It only took two 
nails in the corners of the door frame to hold it up easily.

One of the tails of the garland is much more curled up
than the other (due to being first on the roll).  It relaxes
over time.  You don't have to do this but I like to cut
the tails of the garlands into thirds to make them look
more like ribbons.

You can add other decorations onto the garland also.  
Lightweight items like ribbon can be held onto the 
garland with the tinsel arms being twisted around them.

Other items, like ornaments, can be wired onto the garland.

I plan to add more decorations to the garland but this is
how a basic garland with ribbon added looks:

The garlands look really pretty on staircases too.
Make a garland with colors that will go with your
home and decorations...it is fun and easy!

6 comments

  1. Great, colorful idea for decorating for Christmas!

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    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for this, I am going to try this out this year for my decorations around my house.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE your mesh wreath and mesh garland tutorials!! Thank you so much for taking the time to share these with us. I've been afraid to make a garland but now I'm definitely going to make one!! Thanks again and Happy Holidays to you!!

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  4. your work is alot easier than some I have tried before. Thank you

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