Hey friends! I made this Christmas swag last year to hang on our staircase. I really liked how it turned out, but I was still surprised by how many requests I got for a tutorial for how to make it.
I bought all the pine picks from Hobby Lobby last year. I’m sure they have the same or similar ones in their physical stores this year, but I couldn’t find them online. I did find some similar ones on Amazon which I shared below. But try to get them at Hobby Lobby first – they’re almost always going to be less expensive at Hobby Lobby.
Some of the links in this post are Amazon affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of these links, I may make a small commission at no additional cost to you. If you do purchase through one of my links, thank you so much for helping keep my blog content free for everyone to enjoy!
Lay out 2 pine picks on the table with the fronts facing down, layering them roughly where you want to attach them. I laid the top pine pick slightly to the right so you can better see how I layered them.
From here on out I will call the straight wire piece that all the greenery is attached to the pick as the “spine” and the greenery attached to it as the “branches”.
Use the floral wire to attach the top pine pick (the one that is more to the right in the picture) to the bottom pine pick (the one that is more left in the picture) along the spines. Remember, the fronts of the pine picks are facing down. The arrows show where I attached the top and the middle of the spine on pine pick on top to roughly the middle and almost the bottom of the spine on the lower pine pick.
Add the ornaments (or pine cones) on top of the swag. I just looped them around the wire on the top pine pick, which I bent to use as a hook to hang the swag once it’s finished.
If you have cats, you’ll find that they’ll want to help you make your swag. This is our cat Tom helping me.
Make and attach a bow. I made a bow and attached it using floral wire. I suck at making bows, so I’m not going to include a tutorial on how I made this one (I just got lucky with it). If you’re bow challenged like I am, you can check out tutorials on YouTube demonstrating how to make gorgeous bows.
You can attach the garland the same way as the bow, or you can just loop it over the top of the swag (that’s what I did).
If you’d rather use pine cones on your swag instead of ornaments, here’s a easy way to attach them: glue a strand of jute twine onto the bottom of the pine cone using hot glue, then tie it onto the swag.
After I hung up my new swag, the greenery looked too plain to me, so I added faux eucalyptus and frosted pine branches that I cut from the spine of other picks to give the swag a little more texture. I just stuck the extra greenery in the swag while it was hung up. You can wire them with the floral wire if you need them to be more secure.
Feel free to add more (or less) ornaments, pine cones, ribbons, garland, greenery, etc. Let your creative juices flow and see what kind of gorgeousness you can create!
I hope you enjoyed my tutorial for a DIY Christmas swag! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop them in the comments section below.
Happy Holidays!
Debra Oliver says
really pretty, Michelle, thanks for showing us the how-to. Adorable kitty boy helper, too!
Tee says
Your swag is beautiful, Michelle! It really made your hutch beautiful! You really did a great job on the bow too! Thank you for the tutorial!