Treats? Yes, please! Treats, in any shape or form, are great gifts for dogs (and their humans). If you’re looking for a very fun and festive way to package your present, why not try a DIY dog treat wreath? Treat wreaths would 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.
Display vs. Novelty
Safe display and storage for your wreath depends on the type of treats, whether they’re wrapped or bare, and your ambient conditions. If your treats are shelf-stable, you could display your wreath for a while in normal indoor conditions. But once the dogs sniff things out, all bets are off. Haha! In our opinion, for many dogs (ours included) a wreath is a cute way of presenting the gift of treats, but not for display as a longer term decorative element. The mere presence of the dog treat wreath on our mantle was enough to drive the boys crazy (more on that later in this post). If you’d like a long term treat wreath or something for an outdoor display, you could adapt this DIY idea by using woodcut or clay bone shapes instead. No snacking on those though! And you can check out our DIY dog poop bag wreath for another far less appetising but doggone great wreath idea, too.
DIY Dog Treat Wreath Style Options
Customising Your Wreath Design and Appearance
The DIY dog treat wreath details below can be easily adapted to slightly different wreath shapes and styles. As I’ll explain in our design below, my wreatch was made for sitting display (flat bottom, mirrored sides), but you can wrap all the way around on an angle, especially if you’re hanging. Be conscious of weight for hanging display, and make sure that your wreath form is sturdy enough to support your treats. By switching up the colours, you can easily change the look for other special occasions, too.
Our Christmas Dog Treat Wreath Design
For our own DIY dog treat 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 keeping things on display. Haha! But I suspected as much when I was planning. Instead, our wreath was made to come apart and still look semi-pretty without the dog 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.
My wreath uses the classic Christmas reds and green with a touch of white as the decorative colours. Because of the flat bottom for sitting on the mantle, albeit briefly, I used a formal mirrored-look for the wreath design as opposed to an all-around diagonal circle of treats. The design and construction also aims to maximise potential salvage and 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, as long as your treats aren’t too heavy.
To decorate the wreath, I used ribbon and solid bone shaped treats. The bone shape makes it easy to wrap and secure treats around our wreath form. The treats can be homemade, but ready-made dog treats offer a sturdy and consistent-looking option, plus the storebought treats are usually shelf-stable and store longer. This can be particularly useful for making your wreath 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 the Dog Treat Wreath
My wreath form is completely ribbon wrapped beneath the treat. This gives the wire form a beautiful finished look, but also keeps things looking decorative with treats removed. You can decorate the wreath form differently or leave it plain 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 though, 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 dogs got even more demanding. There was much pining, longing stares, drooling, and even a few attempts to climb the wall! Check out these hilarious photos of the boys trying to convince DogDad to hand over the treats. Successfully too, I might add. Cheeky rascals. That’s his 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!
