How to Make a Beautiful Holiday Wreath Graphic

Happy Holidays Everyone!  Christmas is just around the corner, and I’ve been making wreath cards and ornaments, and generally having a wonderful time playing around with graphics!

I’m a total beginner at this, but I’ve gotten so many questions about how I do these wreaths.  So I thought I’d show you, with a brief little tutorial.

I use PicMonkey.  Anybody who has talked to me for five minutes about photos or graphics knows I LOVE PicMonkey!  I love it so much that I’m an affiliate for the company.  Their Basic subscription plan is what I use.  It’s about $6 a month.  You can do so much and it’s so much fun!  I’m sure when I get more into it, I’ll want to upgrade, but for now this is perfect.

Here’s where you start making a graphic.  A blank screen.  You choose your template size and off you go. 

There are also template sizes for a ton of social media applications.  You don’t even have to guess or figure out what size to use – just choose what you want!

For all the graphics I’ve made so far, I use clip art I buy from Essem Creatives.  I really love Sneha’s lovely watercolors!  I’ve gotten several different packages, and they all go together so beautifully.

So, the next step is putting all the different elements together on your blank canvas.

For this wreath, I started out with a holly leaf. 

Then I copied it.  

PicMonkey is really intuitive.  As you may know, I am SO SERIOUSLY technically challenged!  Back in the olden days (remember Selectric typewriters?) I knew all about technology!  But these days, it’s a pretty steep learning curve for me!  But even I can figure out PicMonkey!

After I had my two holly leaves, I brought over my first branch.  It was big!  So I grabbed the corner of the blue box and dragged it in to make it the size I wanted.

Besides changing the size, you can rotate and flip to change the orientation of each element.  Then you just drag them to wherever you want them, and nudge them into their proper places!

See how it all comes together?

You just keep going back to your clip art library and getting whatever you want.  Next I grabbed some red berries.

They were very large!  I smalled them up and rotated them so they’d hang downward.  Then I copied and pasted so I’d have two, and flipped one of them so they’d be symetrical.  Then dragged them up to the top, over the holly leaves.

Just like making a real wreath, you start with your base.  Now that I had the foundation, I wanted some holiday sparkle!  The clip art collection had some pretty gold leaves, so I added a bunch of them.  Just like with the berries, I copied and pasted, and changed sizes.  

I was going to use that other little green leaf, but decided it didn’t look Christmassy enough!  It’s really easy to change your mind – you can delete anything you don’t like.

At this point my wreath was a little wonky – so I adjusted the circle to be more – well – circular!  Then started filling in the bare spaces with other elements from my library.

One of the other really cool things about PicMonkey is that you can layer all your various elements.  In the case of our wreath, the layering makes it look more like a real one would look.  Some of the branches overlap, or are partly covered by other elements.  Just like if you made it out of real branches and berries! (Cool weirdo color pattern on the screen shot, though, huh?!)

Also – here’s a thing I love a ton.  See over on the left of the screen, there’s a sidebar that lists all your elements?  You can send pieces to the back or bring them up to the top.  Or just move them up or down a level.  Just by clicking on an element in the list!  You don’t have to keep clicking around in your picture to find the element you want to work with.  (Because that’s a pain – especially if it’s buried under a bunch of leaves and berries!)  But with this, you just find it in the list!  Super easy!

When you’re done with your project, you can crop it so there’s not so much white space around it.

Then if you want, you can add words too!  I did three versions of this wreath – Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a blank one so you can write whatever you want.  They’d be great for greeting cards, place cards,  ornaments – whatever. Also, you could just frame them for a little Christmas wall decor. You can grab them all in the Members Library.  

So there you have it!  I’ve just barely scratched the PicMonkey surface, but for the price of a fancy coffee once a month, you could have a ball with this stuff!  If you do, leave a Comment and send me over some pictures – I’d love to see!

In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful holiday!  I’m so happy to be sharing Mantel and Table with you – thank you so much for being here!

———- Shop The Wreath Post ———-