My New Garland at the Front Door, version 1/2011

Our family has a summer cottage couple of hundred kilometers north from the south coast of Finland and last week I took a little break from work to spend couple of days there with the kids and grand parents. The nature around the cottage was still beautiful though summer is gone and even the fall is already turning into winter. We took long walks in the forest and I collected natural materials for a new front door garland.




Now that we still don't have any snow , it is easy to find materials from the forest. I used long willow twigs to create a base for the wreath. The leaveless blueberry branches are the main material and they are accompanied by some gray lichen. They were easy to tie together with iron wire, as they are rather light. The last bit was to decorate the wreath with a lingonberry branch, a small cone and a figure of a reindeer.

This is not only for christmas,
but for the wait of the snowy winter

Some thinning was done in the nearby forest and we found a huge pile of fir branches which still wait for my inspiration to make something out of them. They would also be great  material for a garland, but could I think of something else? Ideas anyone?