DIY Christmas Garland Using Real Pine Branches

I’m thrilled to share my tutorial for how to make DIY Christmas garland using real pine branches!

You guys seriously made my day. After I posted my DIY Christmas garland on Instagram, so many sweet comments poured in as well as questions…lots and lots of questions. First off, I am overjoyed that you love this garland as much as I do. It brings so much happiness and coziness in my home. I hope that if you choose to do this project, you will feel all the same wonderful, cheery feels that I do every time I walk by my staircase.

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Since I got so many questions about how I made it as well as tutorial requests, I wanted to answer all your questions in a DIY Christmas garland tutorial. In this tutorial, I you’ll learn how I made this pretty garland using items I already had in my home (score!) and real pine branches from my yard.

I’m blessed with a beautiful tree line of pine trees on my property so I have no shortage of free branches to use for any Christmas DIY project that requires pine branches. Having easy and free access to these branches really helped keep the cost next to nothing for this project, but I will tell you that this project did take me some time.

Overall, I’d estimate that, between cutting the pine branches off to actually glueing them on and then perfecting them, this project ran me about half a day. I took breaks here and there but given that I had two staircase railings to do, the time element really creeped up.

That being said, I am so glad I completed this project. It gives me all the cheery feels each and every time I look at it, which is A LOT!

HOW TO MAKE DIY CHRISTMAS GARLAND WITH REAL PINE BRANCHES:

To start this project, I used a cheap garland from Walmart as the base. I attached it using zip ties in three different places to my handrail: at the top, in the middle, and right next to the square post at the bottom. I let a little extra garland hang down between each attachment to give it that swoop look.

Next I gathered a bunch of stems from large branches that Jason cut down for me from our pine trees. Fortunately, the branches that Jason cut down were in need of cutting anyway because they were hanging very far over in our yard, so it was a win-win! Once I had the branches, it was easy to cut small stems off using a pair of scissors. It took me two bin-fulls of pine stems to create this look.

Once I had my stems cut, I started on the attachment process. There is a method to attaching these so that you get the long, layered look. I separated out the longer stems so I could use them for the vertical pieces, or the pieces that hang down longways. You can see below how I attached the real pine branches to the faux garland.

I used hot glue to attach the real pine branches to wherever I found a good spot. Sometimes I glued them to the actual greenery and other times I glued them to the wire that ran through the faux garland. 

See below how it looked once I attached all the vertical pine branches. Notice how all the “stick” parts of the branches were showing, so in the next step, I layered branches horizontally to they covered the majority of the “sticks” showing. The goal was to only have greenery showing!

Here’s how the garland started to transform once I added the horizontal layers.

Once I completed that, I stuck in the remaining small-sized branches to fill in the gaps. Some branches I had to glue, some I could just stick in between other branches. Next up came the swag. I really wanted to add swag to have the garland continue down the post, ultimately giving it a more lush look. As you can see below, there was no base layer for the swag, which meant I had to create it entirely from real pine branches.

I gathered some large branches for creation of the swag.

I positioned each branch vertically so that they overlapped one another. You can see below how I hot glued the “stick” part of the branches to each other.

It’s important to note here that hot glue alone would not hold the branches together to make the swags. There was too much weight from each branch for the glue to hold so I had to use string to tie each of the pieces that met, together. This provided the necessary support it needed. When I flipped the completed swag over, all the string was hidden. Below you can see a small piece of red string at the top of the swag, which would later be covered by a bow.

I attached the swag to the garland with a piece of string. Hot glue would not hold all that weight, so I tied the swag to the wire-part of the faux garland. This is why it’s important to have a faux garland base layer for this project!

To attach my homemade burlap bow, I used a paper clip. I actually did an Instagram story about this, so if you love fun decorating tips like this, make sure to follow me on Instagram.

Once the bow was attached, I covered the zip tie by placing more pine branches above the bow.

I added some red berries and faux snow to top it off.

Below is what it looked when I was finished. Or, at least I thought I was finished until I decided that I wasn’t finished! You know how that goes. 😉 About half way through my decorating process I decided I wanted to go neutral this year for Christmas. I took down all the red accents in my home and replaced them with neutral ones. 

I replaced the red bow that was in the middle of the railing with a satin, champagne colored bow instead. I removed the red berries and added faux eucalyptus, pine cones, and random other green branches I had in my stash. The bunches of faux greenery really bulked the look up of the garland. I am incredibly pleased with how they turned out!

I love that they are the first thing guests see when they enter my home. They’re so inviting, festive, and cozy!

If you create them, I hope you love them as much as I do. Let me know in the comments below if you have any questions that I did not answer in this tutorial.

Here’s to a wonderful holiday season, friends!