Our friends had recently bought ten acres of land outside of Nashville and invited us over for a fall hike. As we were meandering along the trails they had cut through their property, my family and I were gathering bits of nature: dried grass, sprigs of native trees, and spent blooms. A visiting friend looked at us with such perplexity, “What will you do with all that stuff?!” We were more surprised that they didn’t collect nature. “Display it on our nature table, of course!”
A lot of the overflow of the beautiful nature we gather also gets stored on a table in our garage and we often use it for crafting in the winter months. As we were considering how we wanted to decorate our home this Christmas season, we decided many of these bits would be perfect for creating a mantlepiece cloud.
How to create a mantelpiece cloud:
Determine where you want to hang the cloud.
Use chicken wire as the base of the cloud. Cut it to size with pliers and mold it into your desired shape. When you add foliage it will double the final size!
Attach suspending wires (how the cloud will hang).
Begin building up the base with the dried materials you collected. We included dried grass, dried asparagus fern, branches with dried leaves, and branches with rose hips. You want to continue adding to the base until the wire is no longer visible.
Once the wire is hidden, hang the cloud, and finish adding the final bits of nature details: dried flowers, berries, and dried seed heads. Step back occasionally to see how it looks from a distance until you have created the perfect piece for your mantel.
Viola! Your mantlepiece cloud is finished and it was the perfect use for some of the lovely bits of nature you collected in the fall. Happy Christmas! xo