We love decorating with holiday evergreens, but if you’re looking for something a little different than a gorgeous wreath or just want a bit more variety in your decor this year, try making your own door swags! These have a more linear shape than wreaths but are still small enough to hang on doors, both indoors and out. Here’s how you can get started!
How Do You Make a Door Swag with Holiday Greenery?
Making DIY door swags for the holidays is easier than you think. The first step in creating your masterpiece is collecting your supplies. Here’s what you’ll need:
- Fresh evergreen cuttings, about 3–4 branches ranging from 1.5–2 feet long
- Pruning shears
- Florist wire (24 gauge recommended)
- Accent foliage cuttings
- Decorations
Your greenery can be harvested from your own backyard, but if that’s not quite your speed, you can also find fresh cuttings from us at Plant Perfect! We recommend using a variety of greenery to add texture and dimension to your door swag. Spruce, noble fir, pine, and cedar cuttings are excellent options. For accent foliage, consider adding boxwood cuttings, holly, red twig dogwood branches, winterberry, or juniper. These will add even more interest to your swag, and you can use them to help create a themed design.
When choosing the decorations for your door swags, there are no rules (except to make sure nothing is too heavy)! You can include magnolia leaves, pinecones, grass fronds, berries, lights, ornaments, ribbons, sprays, garlands, poinsettias, amaryllis, and more. If you have a specific theme that you’re working with, incorporate those colors and textures here.
Now that you have the necessary components, you can start building your DIY decoration!
Build the Base of Your Door Swag
Begin by laying two of your biggest evergreen branches down on your work surface, keeping the cut ends together and pointing away from you. Add layers to the swag, starting with your longer branches and progressing to the shorter cuttings. As you add layers, keep a “pinch point” that you’ll wrap later with florist wire to hold everything together. Ensure that every branch or component crosses this pinch point so that nothing falls out when you hang it. As you add your layers, you can adjust them to get your desired shape. A gentle fan shape, like an upside-down bouquet, is generally the best option for door swags.
Once you’re happy with your design, take your florist wire and bind it all together. We recommend wrapping the pinch point at least half a dozen times, but feel free to wrap it more if needed. Pull the wire as tight as possible while wrapping to ensure that nothing will come loose if it gets bumped or if it’s windy out. After it’s secure, you can cut the wire and finish it off with a twist tie.
Add Your Ornamental Decorations
Now that you have a foundation of greenery, you can add your decorations! How you attach your decorations depends on what you’re using; you can add more stems to the top and wrap them with wire again, use hot glue, or tie your decorations to the outermost branches as you see fit! We recommend keeping your decorations denser at the top of the door swag to cover the wire wrap and then less dense near the base so you can still see all that gorgeous greenery.
It’s Ribbon Time!
Your door swag is complete! If you can still see that bundle of wire at the top holding everything together, we recommend wrapping it in ribbon or adding a bow; this is also a great way to hide any of the hardware used to mount the swag.
For more DIY door swag supplies near you, visit us at Plant Perfect in Bismarck, ND!