After fifteen years of flat living I’m still excited to have a staircase in my home and last year I really wanted to decorate it for Christmas. You can spend a fortune on a ready made one or you can forage for real foliage but since I only have holly in the garden I decided to go the fake route. I know I’ll use this again and again for a long time.

What you need

I bought two fake items for the base of the garland:

B&Q fir tree garland for £8 – this is a pretty basic fir tree garland and although they are out of stock this year now I’m sure there are other similar ones around.

Famibay 2 Pack Artificial Eucalyptus Garland from Amazon, currently £15.59

And added an old gold garland that I’ve been putting on my tree for twenty years! It’s started to fray but once twisted into the green you don’t notice.

Decorations:

You can use anything really but here are some ideas:

Pine cones

Baubles and other tree decorations

Small dried oranges studded with cloves

Dried orange slices

Red berries

Fake flowers

Paper pompoms

Ribbons

Fairy lights

What I did

I twisted the eucalyptus around the fir garland and then wove the gold garland around them both.

I had a bag of fake flowers with their stems cut short from a previous project so I selected all the white, pink and bright red flowers and simply slotted them in once the garland was in place, along with a few fir cones.

To attach it to the bannister I used clear fishing wire, a staple item for many crafters, tied around the spindles and bannister where needed.

Beautiful but not complete without some lights. I had a curtain of fairy lights left over from our wedding so I (time consumingly) weaved each strand in and out of the garland and around the bannister spindles. There were a few left over or that didn’t reach so I just pinned them up to fall down the wall.

Total price: £23.59 plus recycled pieces from my decoration box and old craft projects.