Treats? Yes, please! Treats, in any shape or form, are great gifts for dogs (and their humans). If you are looking for a very fun and festive way to package your present, why not try a DIY dog treat wreath? They’d also be pawesome as animal charity fundraisers, for sale or for raffle. It is much easier to make a dog treat wreath than it might look. A similar wreath can be inexpensively put together using a few simple supplies, and most of the components are edible, reusable, or recyclable. Pawfect! Here are the DIY dog treat wreath details.
DIY Dog Treat Wreath Style Options
Wreath Design and Appearance
The DIY dog treat wreath details below can be easily adapted to slightly different wreath shapes and styles. For our own wreath, I wanted to create a version with a nice semi-flat bottom for the option of resting on the mantle vs. hanging display. Although the dogs vehemently disagreed with display. Haha! I also wanted a formal wreath style mirrored-look as opposed to an all-around diagonal circle of treats.
Display vs. Novelty
In our opinion, for many dogs (our included) a wreath is a cute way of presenting the gift of treats, but not as a longer term decorative element. The mere presence of the dog treat wreath was enough to drive the boys crazy (more on that later in this post). Definitely not suitable for long term holiday display at our place! But I suspected as much. Instead, our wreath was also made to come apart and still look semi-pretty without treats. You can simply slip the bone treats out of this design with relative ease (crack one if you need to create a little slack to start) for storage in the treat jar. The design also aims to maximise potential reuse of the supplies. Less the treats, of course!
How to Make a DIY Dog Treat Wreath
Supplies and Materials
The materials and supplies used to make this DIY dog treat wreath included a wire wreath support (affiliate link), but you could substitute a handmade equivalent instead. A cut-out ring of sturdy cardboard will work. To decorate the wreath, I used ribbon and solid bone shaped treats. The treats can be homemade, but nice store bought treats offer a sturdy and consistent-looking option. Store bought treats are also more shelf-stable and will store longer. This can be particularly useful for making your wreaths in advance, general gifting, or charity fundraisers, since most homemade dog treats have a limited shelf life compared to store bought treats.
- Wire wreath support or a handmade equivalent
- Sturdy bone shaped treats
- Ribbon in your choice of colour(s). Length will depend on size of wreath.
- Scissors
- Adhesive tape
Making a Dog Treat Wreath
My wreath form is completely ribbon wrapped beneath the treat. This gives the wire form a beautiful finished look, but also makes the wreath still look decorative with treats removed. You can decorate the wreath form differently if you wish. To make a similar dog bone wreath:
- Secure one end of your base ribbon (green on my wreath) to the wreath form with tape. You can hot glue, staple, or stitch if you prefer.
- Loop several times for security, the start working your way around the wreath with overlapping diagonal passes until the wreath is fully covered.
- Loop around the start/end point several times for extra security, tape to secure, and cut the excess ribbon. This will be the top of your wreath.
- Optional: Leave a small length of unwrapped ribbon for a hanging loop and/or to secure a decorative bow.
- Just to one side of this top point, using the same ribbon or another complimentary colour (red on my wreath), tape and loop one end of your treat wrapping ribbon to secure
- Work your way around the wreath on a diagonal wrapping a bone treat into the front of each loop. Ensure there is enough tension in your loops to hold the treat securely.
- Once you are halfway around the wreath, loop several times, then cut and secure the end your ribbon with tape. This will be the bottom of the wreath.
- Repeat starting from the other side of the top and working in the opposite direction. Ensure you have a nice tidy bottom when doing your final wrap and cut.
- Optional: Embellish with a fancy bow or other decorative elements.
Doggone Great Wreath, Doggone Impatient Dogs
Impatiently Waiting for Early Christmas Treats
I LOVED the final result, as did the dogs. As anticipated, it was far to enticing to display for long. I was closely supervised for blog photos. Once the treat wreath moved to the mantle in the lounge for (short lived) display, the dog’s got even more demanding. There was much pining and longing stares with intermittent attempts to climb the wall! Check out some of these hilarious photos of the boys trying to convince their Dad to hand over the treats. Successfully too, I might add. Cheeky rascals. That’s dog Dad’s arm in the collage below.
Shifting the Treats to the Treat Jar
As noted above, this was why I decided to create a wreath that disassembled easily for less tempting treat storage. We had let the dogs “have” the wreath for a few pictures before slipping out the treats. Such fun! Don’t worry – there was no wild binge after these pics. Each was rewarded with one treat and the rest went into their goodie jar. One or two may have had an extra bite mark, though! The underlying wreath and bow still looks quite nice (ours is currently back on the mantle as a ribbon wreath), but it also comes apart easily into the initial materials with minimal waste so you can reuse almost everything if you wish. Yeah!
