Wild Rosehip Candle Ring and Holiday Tablescape

 I have often said that the chief joy that I have in decorating for Christmas and other holidays is in creating something new.  I am not the kind of person who puts out the same decorations year after year with no variations. Of course I do keep my decorations and add to them each year but I am always using new themes or trying to highlight some new find.  

For several years now I have had a table centerpiece with a pillar candle in a hurricane glass.  I raise it up on a cake stand and I can change out the greenery each season.  I have several rings made up that I can just swap out.  The cake stand gets it up off the surface so it doesn't take up much room and I can grab the whole thing and move it off quickly and easily.  I will probably put it back after Christmas.  But for now I am tired of it.  For one thing, pillar candles get harder and harder to light as they get older.  I want tapers this year.

I collected up all of these brass candlesticks several years ago.  I have used them a little, but not in a whole group.  It's time to let them shine.  First I cleaned them well and gave them a little polish.  Now to figure out some greenery.  You know, something simple like this...

This is a perfect spot for the rosehips.  As a base for the candle ring, I am using a three inch macrame hoop.  To keep the berries from spinning around it and to disguise the gold color, I wrapped it in floral tape.  I am using a finer gauge of paddle wire, but I cut a length of it off the paddle and wound it up tight to make it easier to pass through the ring.

I snipped the ends of the rosehips off of the bramble with kitchen shears.  The newspaper is to contain the mess.  There are a lot of pieces of dried rose petals and old pollen that fall off as a fine dust and this will also help keep the thorns out of my sock feet.

You begin like any wreath.  Take a little bunch of stems and wrap the wire securely around them.

There is an up and a down to each sprig.  

They are really quite pretty.

Take two or three more little stems and lay them on top of the first ones, securing them with your thumb.  Use your other hand to wrap the wire around and through the hoop.  It doesn't have to be too tight. The floral tape really helps quite a bit.

Keep going...

It doesn't matter if it is a little irregular.  You can make it as thick as you want as long as you have plenty of material.  When you get back to the beginning, you may need to place a gob of hot glue in the empty space and just sort of weave a few last sprigs into the bare spot.  Unlike a door wreath, you don't have a bow or anything to fill in where the end meets the beginning.

My big handful of hips made two matching rings.  I think I want a smaller (sparser) one on the candlesticks at each end.  

Time to go foraging again.  Like last year I ordered a box of evergreens for making the wreath for our front fence so when that arrives I will lay some of that incense cedar or fir tips in and around the candlesticks.  This won't be a very moveable arrangement, but it will be bright and cheery.