How to make a candy cane wreath

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. I MAY EARN FROM QUALIFYING PURCHASES.

Y’all. I did a craft project with my kids with like zero planning before going to the store…and I didn’t have to make a second trip to the store. 

I kept seeing wreaths all over my instagram feed and knew I wanted to make one. But I needed it to be easy enough for my 6 and 4 year old to do (or at least help out!). So, I present to you our Candy Cane Wreath (which will later work for Valentine’s Day and Dr. Suess’s birthday!)

I bought the styrofoam wreaths and tulle at Hobby Lobby (they always have sales and coupons you can access from your phone). The Tulle was 50% off. You need about 1.5 packages of tulle (100 yards) for one wreath (I think these were 14″ wreaths).

I did have a quick look while at the store to find out what I needed and I found Baby Rabies. It appears she’s the expert on all things tulle and wreath. One of her tricks was to wrap the tulle around a box and then cut it on both ends so they are relatively uniform in length (about 13-14 inches) without measuring each piece (thank goodness I found that. I never would have thought to do it and it would have taken days to cut all of that tulle).

It ends up super duper thick and even with my brand new scissors I had a hard time cutting through it all. I’d recommend doing half of a spool of tulle at a time.

(And the second time, I had a helper hold the box for me so I could wrap the tulle around much faster. So much faster that I forgot to do half of it and had to cut through the whole spool again!)

We gathered three pieces of one color together and tied them twice around the wreath. Then sort of squished the tulle together. 

Grab the next color (three of them), rinse and repeat, squishing as you go. We decided to put the knot on the outside edge of the wreath to really show off the pattern. I tried the “poofs” facing out but it just sort of looked like fluffy nonsense.

The 6 year old (when she felt motivated) had no trouble tying the knots on the wreath. Getting them even was a little more of a challenge, but I wanted her to own this, at least part, so she did what she could and was proud!

Midway through she requested a blurry picture. Well, she requested a picture. I did an awesome job focusing and made it blurry. Turns out the wreath makes a nice frame, too.

N (4) was really good at getting the three pieces of tulle ready for me to tie on next. Her candy cane pattern (she insisted) needed pink, too. So I went with it. She was also really good at keeping the pattern going and knowing what color needed to come next (and even caught me a couple times when I slipped up). She helped out for the entire wreath (which probably took about an hour start to finish).

You can see the finished candy cane wreath up top. I tied a ornament on it to give it a little something and stuck it on the door. Ultimately, I think it would look nice with some oversized candy canes glued on it, but remember, zero planning? So that didn’t happen.

And here’s the bubblegum candy cane wreath that will probably be hanging up at our house until at least Valentine’s Day. We like our seasons to overlap! (No, we won’t have Christmas lights up all year!)

(With the three spools of tulle I literally had 3 pieces of cut tulle left. We used almost every single piece!)

And, ta-da. The end. Happy crafting.

(Cost for one wreath with the tulle 50% off and using my 40% off coupon on the wreath, less than $15 with tulle left over).