Holiday Decorating: DIY Star Anise Wreaths

In this post: How to make a beautiful, fragrant star anise wreath to decorate your home for Christmas

The Christmas decorations are up (finally!). I’m always a bit late to the game 🙂 This year I decided to add a little something special to my dining room – small star anise wreaths hung on the back of each dining room side chair:

Last winter I bought a large star anise wreath for our front door and loved not only how it looked but also its wonderful licorice scent. So once I decided to add some holiday decorations to the backs of our dining chairs, I was quick to come up the idea of creating small star anise wreaths hung on the chairs with decorative ribbon. (post includes affiliate links – see my full disclosure statement {here})

There’s not much to this DIY project – here’s the supply list:

• 8″ foam wreaths (you could definitely go smaller or bigger depending on your preference – I bought mine on sale at Jo-Ann’s
• Brown burlap (I bought 2 yards, which is more than enough for 6 wreaths)
• Whole star anise, which can be found online {here} or locally at Asian grocery stores. You can also find star anise at spice stores but you’ll typically pay much more it.
• Wire edged ribbon (mine is from Michael’s)
• Glue gun

First cut your burlap into long strips 2-3″ wide and hot glue the end of your first strip to the back of the wreath. Next, wrap the burlap around the wreath, pulling it tight as you go. I used two long burlap strips for each wreath, gluing the end of the first strip and the beginning of the second strip to the back of the wreath and continuing to wrap it around until the entire wreath was covered. 

Once you’ve covered your entire wreath with the burlap and hot glued the end of your last strip to the back, you can star gluing on the star anise.  Simply put a generous dot of hot glue on the back of each piece of star anise and stick it on. It’s a little bit of a puzzle (which I found to be sickly fun), fitting the star anise pieces together as closely as possible. Sometimes you’ll have to break off an arm or two of the star for the best fit. Cover the entire surface of the wreath except for the back. It’s very simple and easy but does take a fair amount of time – I did mine at a leisurely pace while watching TV but each wreath took me over an hour. 

Finally, simply tie the wreath to the top of your dining chair with a wire edged ribbon.  

These wreaths would also look great in other areas of your home, such as hung over a large mirror.  I need to pick up a few more foam wreaths to make the star anise wreaths for the chairs on the other side of my table and I may pick up an extra one to do just that. 

For the centerpiece of my dining room table, I used a white crackled jar (a HomeGoods find) that normally sits on the open shelf of my china chest and simply filled it with sprigs of artificial berries that I found at Hobby Lobby. I love these Hobby Lobby berry branches – they are so much more attractive than any other ones that I’ve seen – the berries look real and are variable shades of deep red and the branches they are attached to are quite lovely – curvy and willowy. 

On both sides of my berry filled jar, I layered some Christmas tree clippings along with some pinecones from our backyard and a bit of red wire edged ribbon.

I also filled two short glass bowls (HomeGoods, again) with pillar candles surrounded by hazelnuts and pecans: 

While I do have a few sets of napkin rings, none of them went well with the rest of my table décor so I just used what I already had and hot glued two small pine cones to a sprig of the same berries that I used in my centerpiece.  Then I tied them onto my napkins (Crate & Barrel Pinecone Napkins) with some gold wire edged ribbon.

Did you all finish up your holiday decorating weeks ago or are you more of a last minute gal like me? Hope you all have a great weekend!