Engrave the Halls with Boughs of Holly

An inspirational post on making a Christmas wreath. My wreath-making skills are zero, but the results are quite unique. Here's the result:

You'll want to know about the engraving first. Each of the 7cm circles are natural pine wood slices. I picked them up at Amazon for £9.99 GBP. Unfortunately, they appeared in a popular TV program in the last couple of weeks and the price is now £11.99! You can find them on Amazon here.

The letters are made separately in my photo editing app at 300dpi and around 5cm in size. Make sure you preview all of the letters to get them sized proportionately. For example, if you start by sizing a letter "I", letters such as "M" and "X" will be far too big. Using greyscale mode at 14%, I get the results below. I'm happy with the brown colouring as opposed to the usual black results from a deep engraving.

Next, I have 6 more slices (3 for each side) which are to form the rear layer of the wording. Each one is drilled twice with a 2mm drill bit.

Mini tie-wraps are now pushed through the drilled holes, ready to be attached to the final wreath.

With a glue-gun, I now lay out the three rear slices, and place the letters one by one and attach. The letter slices are slightly overlapped, the glue is carefully hidden from view. Once all of the letters are placed, the back of the structure can be strengthened with glue in any way necessary, as it is out of sight.

You can see the front and side result in the next image.

The final wreath is a combination of electrical wire for the structure, greenery and holly from the garden, and strings of cones, artificial berries and mini LED lights to finish the look.

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Computer software versions - Windows & Mac

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