$25 - $30 (based on 2023 prices)
Makes one wreath
Makes one wreath
In 2023, I was commissioned by a local theater to serve as a consultant and prop builder for their production of The Haunting of Hill House, which was based on Shirley Jackson’s novel. Being a fan of the books since I was a teenager, I jumped at the opportunity and spent several months creating a collection of items to decorate both the house depicted on the stage and the cemetery created in the lobby to greet patrons before they entered the theater. For this project, I built a withered wreath to accompany one of the graves in the lobby.
- One sixteen-inch grapevine wreath
- Twenty-four artificial roses (twelve yellow and twelve white)
- Six artificial white poppies
- One pan large enough to soak all of the flowers
- At least one tablespoon of dark roasted coffee grounds
- One baking sheet large enough to accommodate all of the flowers
- One standard lighter
- Five clusters of artificial ferns (about six leaves per cluster)
- One 10 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying spray paint in flat black*
- One 10 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying spray paint in flat brown*
- One 10 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying spray paint in green apple*
- One 10 oz. can of interior/exterior, fast-drying spray paint in olive*
- One 2 oz. bottle of acrylic paint in flat black*
- Two feet of ribbon
2. Sprinkle the coffee grounds into the pan and add boiling water, allowing the flowers to soak in the liquid. How dark you stain the flowers will depend on your desired state of decomposition. For a light brown, only use one or two tablespoons of coffee and let the flowers soak for less than a day. For a dark brown, increase the coffee to three or four tablespoons and let the flowers steep in the liquid for several days.
3. Once the flowers have absorbed the coffee, move them to a baking sheet, sprinkle them with some of the wet coffee grounds, and put them in a 300˚F oven for ten to twenty minutes, checking them regularly to prevent them from catching on fire.
4. Use a lighter to burn the edges of the flowers. I found that a Butane gas lighter, because of its length, makes the process easier and safer. Likewise, perform this step in a well-ventilated area and near either a sink or pan of water.
5. Arrange the ferns on a sheet of cardboard or newspaper. To prevent them from moving, adhere the leaves with painter’s tape. Then, beginning with a base coat of green apple, build up layers of black, brown, and olive to make the ferns look dead. Once they are dry, turn them over and repeat the process on the other side.
6. For further distress, use a lighter to wilt the leaves and burn their edges. As with step four, perform this process in a well-ventilated area and near water.
7. Glue the ferns to the wreath, spiraling them outward. As you do so, try not to make the coverage too dense because you need the prop to look weathered and as though some of the ferns have fallen out.
8. Glue the flowers to the inner edge of the wreath. As with step seven, do not aim for a thick cluster because you want to give the illusion that some of the flowers have fallen off. Following this, use brown paint to darken the stigma and style of the flowers to enhance their wilted appearance.
9. Repeating the process in step two, coffee stain the ribbon. For the time-pressed haunter, it may prove more effective to stain the ribbon while staining the flowers. After this, glue the ribbon at an angle across the wreath. While I used a ribbon with crosses, you can use whatever design you wish or skip this step entirely if the accent does not fit your aesthetic.
10. If the wreath did not come with hanging loops, you can fashion one with steel wire, folding it in half and wrapping both strands around each other. At the request of the director, I kept the wreath relatively simple, but you can embellish it further with details like insects crawling out of the rotting buds or splatters of blood.
*You will not use the entire bottle’s content for this project.
