My First Mantel

Besides the excitement of the tree, I have been DYING to get this 3 sided fireplace decorated for Christmas. I have never made a garland for a mantel, so this took a lot of experimentation for me.

I bought 2 bundles of garland in the garden section of Home Depot and some command hooks so that I could secure the greenery as I needed to. I also found tiny little fairy lights in the clearance section– in hindsight, I wish I would have bought something that was battery powered, but luckily I have outlets on both sides of the fireplace, so it actually worked out ok. For decoration, the dollar spot of Target right now has adorable houses of various sizes. Some are lit, some are wooden and they vary in size – I picked up a mixture of these to mix into the mantel (thinking these would be fun to paint in the future.) 

To transform my mantel, I started with the greenery. First, I laid it over the mantel and tried to figure out the most natural way the greenery would lay and bend around the corners. Once I got to a place that I liked the way it was laying, I secured it with the command hooks, choosing the locations based on where I wanted to shape it more and then a couple more for good measure. I actually layered some garland in to fill in where I thought the shape was a little bit lacking – when I did that, I decided it might be cool to have the garland wrap around a vase I had next to the fireplace and land on the floor, so I worked the shape a little bit to make that happen and secured them to maintain the shape. 

Next, I plugged the lights in (important to make sure it can reach!) and started weaving them in through the greenery. The nice thing about the lights I bought was that they were attached to wire instead of just a normal cord. This made them really lightweight and easy to bend so they would do what I wanted them to. Ultimately, I adjusted to make the light even throughout the garland – I didn’t want to double back with the lights and have one half brighter than the other. Once the lights were in, I added some red berries by sticking them into the wire throughout the length of the mantel. 

The greenery, lights and berries are a great place to stop if you want something simple and classic, or they make a great base for anything else you might want to mix in! 

In my case, I decided to add in houses and trees that I found in the target dollar spot playing around with their locations depending on what the greenery was doing at different places. I was having trouble seeing some of the houses above the greenery and I wanted to make sure the houses were set back far enough so they didn’t fall off the mantel, so I ended up using some tiny sauce bowls to raise some of the houses up and create a little visual layering. I mixed in a vase and some trees I already had to add some texture and interest as well. 

Here’s a video, from start to finish!

Happy decorating!