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How To Make a Beautiful Dried Hydrangea Wreath

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You can either purchase already dried hydrangea flowers from your local craft store, or you can dry your own. The biggest trick when drying your own is the timing of when you pick the flowers. It is best to pick them right before you anticipate your first fall frost. If you pick them mid-summer, they just will not dry correctly. Dried hydrangea wreaths are so beautiful and versatile in a home, and a lot of fun to make as well.

Cut your hydrangea flowers and strip any leaves from the branches. Then either hand upside down in a darkened room to dry, or simply stay upright in a vase to dry. As long as you harvest them at the right time, it’s difficult to fail. Try to pick some blooms from different plants for a nice variety of color.

Pick the type of base you want to use for a wreath. My personal favorites are either Styrofoam or grapevine type wreath bases. Take some floral wire and wrap it around the wreath, then form a loop of the wire to hang from the wall, and then wrap the wreath again. You might try hanging it from the wall at this point to make sure it lies correctly, and then make any needed adjustments while the wreath is bare.

To do a Styrofoam wreath, use a low melt point hot glue gun. Separate each bloom into smaller florets. Hot glue each floret into the wreath base, actually poking the stem down into the Styrofoam base. With each bloom, space it out over the surface of the wreath, for example; a floret at the top, next left side, bottom, then right side, then inside the circle of the wreath, and outside of the wreath. Continue to do this with each bloom until you fill it.

The thing you’re looking at now is balance. Step back and look at a distance. Consider balance of color, shape with each side balanced, not to full or sparse anywhere, and none sticking out noticeably farther than the rest.

Color balance is especially important. The reason of doing each bloom systematically over the wreath is to help achieve color balance.

Now that your wreath is complete, you may want to leave it with this plain, simple look. You also may want to add baby’s breath or other dried florals to it, or a bow. Experiment with the type of look you like.

For a grapevine base, the concept is the same as above. If you want to add bows or ribbons, glue them first to the base then glue to hydrangea flowers on it around them. Sometimes bare spaces looks nice to allow sight of the grapevines. Experiment on the design you like.

If they are in direct sunlight it will be a much shorter time. However, the next year, feel free to strip the old flowers off, and make another with the same base for another year’s worth of a gorgeous hand made wreath!

Typically people expect dried floral arrangements to last for years and are disappointed when they don’t hold up. This is a myth. Expect them to look good for about a year, that’s really all they were meant to hold up for and still look good.