Making Your Own Wood Bead Floral Wreath is a lot easier than you might think!
My friend and neighbor sent me a picture of a beautiful wreath she saw on Etsy and asked if I knew how to make one. I’m pretty good at reverse engineering crafts and felt confident I could handle the Wood Bead Floral Wreath she showed me.
After doing some research, I quickly found there are three main ways to make these fun wreaths: stringing wood beads onto a metal hoop form, gluing round or halved wood beads to a metal hoop form, or gluing half wood beads to a flat, wood wreath ring form.
I quickly knew I didn’t want to try and cut through a metal ring. During my research and also just knowing how roll-y beads are, I knew I wouldn’t try and glue whole beads. So it came down to gluing half beads to either the metal ring or the flat form. The problem with using the ring is that you would have to hold each bead in place until it dried because it would slide around or off the ring. There would also be a very good chance the beads wouldn’t lay evenly and would look all wonky. The flat ring form seemed like the best option for me. Let’s see how I did it!
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Make Your Own Wood Bead Floral Wreath Materials
- 10-12, 1.5-inch (40mm) Split Wood Balls
- 16-inch Wood Wreath Ring Form
- Hot Glue Gun & Glue Sticks
- Wire Cutters
- Faux Flowers (These peonies come in 18 different colors!)
- Faux Silver Dollar Eucalyptus Greenery
- Faux Lambs Ear Greenery
- Small Bit of Twine or Ribbon
Make Your Own Wood Bead Floral Wreath Steps
1: Lay out your wood beads on the form to see how many you will need. For my 16-inch flat wreath ring form, I used 20, 1.5-inch wood bead halves. Your count will be different if you use larger or smaller beads or want a larger or smaller opening for the flowers.
Note: You can only find these flat, wood wreath rings at Michael’s. And I looked hard. At least at Michael’s, you can use your coupon!
2: Hot glue the wood bead halves to the wreath form, butting the beads up against each other and centering them on the form. You won’t be gluing beads around the whole form for this project. You can save any leftover beads for another project.
3: While the beads cool and set, start placing uncut greenery stems in both directions to see how you like the placement. I used eucalyptus and lambs ear stems with a couple of succulent pieces that came with my bundle.
4: Now take your wire cutters and trim the stems so they have about five inches of wire to hold the glue without poking over the edge of the wreath. You can curve and bend the wire to match the curve of the wreath form.
For wire cutters, if you are using those wire cutters sold near the floral section, throw them out the window immediately and go find a pair of pliers in your toolbox that have the wire cutters included on them. Needle-nosed pliers often have this feature. If you just want to have your own awesome pair of wire cutters for future projects, find some like the ones I linked to above. You want heavy-duty ones that can actually cut through those thick floral stems without giving you hand cramps.
5: One eucalyptus stem at a time, hot glue them to the blank part of your wreath form, with pieces pointing both directions, to the left and to the right. You want to leave an opening in the center for your flowers. Whatever greenery you choose to use, try to put the flatter pieces at the bottom and the fuller ones on top.
I like to use a small set of needle-nosed pliers to hold and press down the glued stems to save my fingers from multiple burns. Any glue just peels right off the metal after it cools.
6: Now top the eucalyptus leaves with the lamb’s ear. Try to glue the stems to the wreath base, rather than on top of another stem, when you can. I also added some random succulent leaves that came with the bundle of lamb’s ear I bought. I don’t know what they’re called, though. Really, you can use whatever greenery you like here.
7: Once the hot glue is cool, behead your flowers, or pull the blooms off of the stems. Place them without glue first to make sure you know how you want them to look.
8: Now hot glue your flowers to the wreath form. Since my flowers were pretty large, I only needed to use three flowers, but if you want to use smaller ones as my friend did, make sure you get enough to fill the space between the greenery. I linked to peonies above, but please feel free to use any flowers that suit your fancy.
If you would like the option of swapping out your florals with the seasons, instead of hot gluing them just use floral wire and wrap the stems around the form. Be careful of any wire ends scratching your surfaces, though.
9: Now find your top center and either tie on or hot glue a loop of twine or ribbon to hang it. My friend chose to just hang hers from the wreath itself, no loop, so you can opt to do that as well.
That’s it! Making your own gorgeous Wood Bead Floral Wreath is a lot easier than it might seem, right? And you have so many options available with florals or ribbon to completely change up the look. You could even paint or stain the wood beads a different color or white if the light-colored wood doesn’t match your decor.
You can definitely make these with larger 2-inch or smaller wood bead halves, you’d just need to calculate how many more or fewer you’d need. I felt like the 1.5-inch size was perfect for the scale of the 16-inch wreath. For larger wreaths, I think the 2-inch beads would look great.
For now, I have my wood bead wreath hanging on the back of my front door, facing into my house. I’m thinking though, that I want to hang it on the cabinets above my stove. My biggest doubt about that placement is all the steam that would be coming up off the stove. Maybe the cabinets above my refrigerator…hmm so many options.
Where do you plan to hang your Wood Bead Floral Wreath once you’re done!?
If you love beautiful floral projects, be sure to check my tutorial for a Spring Picket Fence Floral Arrangement. You may recognize some of the flowers!
If you love light and bright wreaths, you have to see my tutorial on how to make a Lavender & White Floral Spring Wreath!
Where did you purchase the flowers?
Hello, I purchased the flowers I used at Michael’s but I linked to some similar ones available through Amazon in my materials list since the turnover of Michael’s florals is pretty regular.
Would you use hot glue if you were putting outside on pirch
Hi Sharon, actually I would because my porch is shaded. If your wreath would get hotter, you may want to use wood glue for the beads and then wire your florals on instead of hot gluing them. Heat is what you have to worry about, not rain, really. Just make sure you give the wood glue a whole day to set and dry before trying to hang it or attach the florals because the beads may slide off, lol.
This bead wreath is beautiful and so classy looking. It would look perfect in my living room with the flowers you used. I might have to try making one myself!
Thank you very much, Pam! They’re actually super easy to make if you know how to handle a glue gun.