How to Make a Greenman Wreath
Spring is almost here and that makes my heart so happy. I don't know about you but I am so over the dark, bleary Winter days. So to celebrate the turning of the seasons we made ourselves this Greenman wreath and I would love to share the tutorial on how we did it with you all.
All that beautiful lush greenery is just what we needed to welcome Spring. We hung him on our front door
What you need for to make the greeman wreath
- Plain white mask
- Texture paste
- Paint (black, brown, gold, umber etc.)
- Paint brush and sponge
- Moss
- A piece of wood to mount the Greenman on
- Hot glue gun and lots of glue sticks
- Faux greenery and twigs
The first thing I did was to give that plain white mask some bark-ish texture using the texture paste. It helps a lot if you use a real piece of bark as reference purposes and apply lots of the texture paste using a plastic knife so it forms little peaks and valleys.
Leave it to dry before painting the mask black. I used blackboard paint but any black paint will do as long as it's not too shiny.
Add various shades of brown on top of the black paint with a sponge. The trick here is not to overthink things. Don’t be scared to mix the colors and build up the layers until you’re happy.
Can you see that piece of bark on the nose in the piccy below? That's the look you're going for.
And no self respecting Greenman would be complete without a little bit of moss to show he's been around for a while Just glue it on
Okay confession time. I should have given the Greenman some eyes right in the very beginning. It would have made things so much easier. But that's how you learn To make the eyes, you can either use clay or you can take a piece of floral foam and squish it into the sockets. Floral foam is really soft and easy to form.
Once you're happy with the shape of the eyes you can paint the eyes onto the foam or clay. I know not everyone is comfortable painting eyes, but this tutorial will show you how to do it in a few easy steps. If you’re still not keen to try, you can download eyes from the internet and mod podge them on.
All that's left to do is glue a whole bunch of faux greenery and twigs onto a piece of wood and attach the Greenman's face.
Pretty cool right?
I would love to know what you think. Is it something you would make to celebrate Spring? Let me know in the comments and for loads more photos and detailed instructions just click here.
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
Love it. I have a metal greenman face hanging in my yard on an Arbor .... maybe I could do something with that?