Making a wreath from old walnuts was a first... but I took the challenge!
Over the years a number friends and family have (affectionately) described my home as a nuthouse. I've always put this down to the Bohemian lifestyle we live here in north Bohemia! However, this year they might have a point...
Every autumn I collect the walnuts with Lu from underneath the huge tree that dominates the main lawn. I fill a bag and take them straight to the top attic to dry. Of course Lu would prefer to go for a walk and watch the sun rise and we often do that too.
Although we've always had very good harvests, the two previous years the nuts have not been that good and have had insects in them... so I ended up not using many of them. I just move them aside and make room for the new crop.
This year when I went up, I just found there was no room! Once I'd spread the new nuts out to dry, the old ones were stacked up either side, and although it's a huge attic, they were just taking up too much space.
They're actually pretty amazing things when you look closely at them. And as I have so many I thought I might as well do something with them. So I decided on a wreath.
I imagined this might be tricky, but how difficult could it be? This is a document of my first attempt!
I chose a shop bought straw wreath base which are very inexpensive and have a good surface area to glue the walnuts to.
I used a hot glue pistol in the end. I would have liked to think of a more natural way, but couldn't come up with anything that wouldn't take a lot of time. So I stuck with the pistol.
Once I had everything ready, I sat myself out in the garden and just started fixing them into place. The materials stick pretty well and in addition to glueing the walnuts to the straw wreath base, I also glued them to one another making the whole thing a lot stronger.
One of the problems I came up against was getting them to fit in place. Walnuts are different sizes but not that much so I did take some time looking for smaller ones to fit into gaps later on.
What I didn't expect was how many walnuts this would take and how heavy it would eventually be. This has turned out to be one pretty heavy wreath!
Although I could have done it a little better, hidden the glue more and arranged the nuts a little more systematically, it's not turned out too badly and I think I'll definitely make some more. However, Kitten McGraw was not impressed until he found something to play with...
For me the beauty of this wreath is that it's a fabulous colour the way it is, but it would also look amazing sprayed gold, silver, black? And it would look just as dramatic.
I love using natural materials to make decorations. There are so many pine cones, and also acorns under the oaks this year and I'm pretty tempted to make a wreath using acorns! But I'll save this until another day♥️
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