Our Holiday Door Swag: A Step by Step How-To!

I love coming up with new decorating ideas every Christmas but I have a few traditions that I repeat year after year, including the Christmas door swag on our front door. When we first moved in, I clipped some evergreen branches from the tree in our front yard, berry branches from the back yard, looped on a trio of bells and a bow and the tradition was born! I not only love that I’m able to put it together using branches foraged from our own yard, but also that it’s quick and simple to make AND budget friendly.

Let me show you how it’s done so you can make one for your own front door too! (post includes affiliate links – see my full disclosure statement {here}).

1. Gather Greenery & Berry Branches

I’m lucky to have the mother of all Christmas trees smack in the middle of our front yard:

2. Layer Your Greenery and Berry Branches

The rest is simple!  Layer your greenery and berry branches (I put the berry branches near the front with one thin layer of greenery over at least some of them) and cut the ends of the branches so that they’re even:

Tie your branches together with either rubber bands or a hairband (hairbands tend to hold up better over time!)

3. Hang Your Swag from a Wreath Hanger

Pick your swag up from the banded end with about half of the branches on one side and half on the other side and hang it from your front door on a simple wreath hanger such as {this one}:

4. Layer on Bells (Or Whatever Else You Come Up With!)

Next I layer on a trio of bells to really make my door dec shine – I bought mine {here} and reuse them year after year. Some large jingle bells would be another fun option! Dig around in your Christmas boxes and there’s a good chance you’ll find you already have something that works!   

My bells came hung on a rope loop so it was pretty simple to layer them on – I just loop them over the top of the greenery branch ends:

5. Tie a Bow on It!

The last step is to tie a bow around the top of your swag with wire-edged ribbon where it hides the hair bands holding it together. I’ve found that’s 2 1/2″ wide ribbon works best!  You need a longer length of ribbon than you would expect (at least three yards!) so that you have long ribbon tails that cascade down the sides of the swag:

The wire-edged ribbon not only allows you to shape your bow so that it’s nice and full but you can also create little ripples in the ribbon tails to get that cascading look. A few ribbons that would work well for this are {this red plaid check ribbon}, {this gorgeous ticking stripe ribbon}, and {this red, white, & black plaid}. You’ll have plenty left over to wrap presents with! I used {this 2.5″ watercolor ribbon} that’s no longer available in red but is still stocked in a pretty salmon color.

Then just take a step back, trim your swag up a little if it needs it, and that’s it, you’re done! The whole thing takes less than half an hour to make – I’ve actually found that I like how it turns out best if I don’t fuss too much over it since the beauty of it is how natural it looks. Every year since I started making a Christmas door swag back in 2013, it’s gotten a little more “large and in charge”. If I live in this house another ten years, my swags might eventually start taking over the entire door 🙂

And while we’re hanging around our front porch, I’ll go ahead and show you what I did with my planters too:

They actually turned out better than I expected considering that I simply bought a few bundles of greenery that I thought looked pretty and totally winged it from there! Here’s exactly what I did:

1. Filled each planter with soil
2. Distributed 5-6 short magnolia branch bundles throughout the planter
3. Filled in the empty spaces with the integrifolia (leafy greenery) – you could also use boxwood branches or other greenery for this
4. Distributed 3 rose hips stems (the berries) throughout each planter
5. Finished each planter off with two pinecones on sticks stuck into the soil. I had these from past Christmas seasons – you can buy them this way or hot glue a wood skewer or dowel onto a pinecone for a quick and easy DIY.

I’m loving this festive mix!

The great thing about using magnolia branches and integrifolia is that even when they die, they dry looking very much like they do when alive (at least in cold weather climates like ours!) so my planters looked nice all winter long.

Porch sources: Black lantern sconces  |  Planters  |  “oh hello” doormat

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial! If you make your own greenery swag for your front door, I’d love to see it – share and tag me (@drivenbydecor) on Instagram or shoot me an email with a pic!