Happy Fall my witches! Let’s kick off this spooky season with a ridiculously easy DIY that not only looks good, but smells good too!
Everyone knows witches love the crisp fall air and the best way to let everyone know you have a coven in your casa is with an authentic looking witch broom.
While there are plenty on the market you can pick up including several options available at the local big box Halloween stores, they’re predominately made of plastic and while they look good on the websites, when you see them in person they’re definitely lacking the magic that makes a true bristle broom (also called a besom) so special.
To make your own you will need:
- Long heavy branch to serve as your broom handle
- Sandpaper (if needed)
- 2 large cinnamon brooms (I grabbed mine at Home Depot for about $5 each)
- Thick heavy twine
- Zip ties
- Wire clippers or strong snips
The best way to start this project is by finding your broom handle. I managed to find mine while out on a nature walk deep in the heart of a little swampy area near my place where I release my orphan mice.
You want a handle that speaks to you and pulls you in. I found mine half submerged in a nasty patch of goopy mud. I noticed it because the bark had been removed and there was a nail driven through the top. Not only had it been pre-smoothed for me, but the length was perfect, just a little over 3 1/2 feet long. I am guessing someone had used it at some point as a hiking stick and then discarded it. Regardless of what the original purpose was, it called to me and I knew I’d found my broom handle.
I took it home, washed it off, pulled out the nail, and smoothed out a few little spots where it was a touch rough with my sandpaper.
Time to assemble my broom. First thing I did was lay out my supplies.
Make sure when you buy your cinnamon brooms that you grab the full sized ones. They should be about three feet long.
Using your snips, carefully snip off the twine that holds them together. You can either repurpose this twine for the project or if the pieces are too small, toss them and use fresh twine.
Measure your cinnamon broom bundle and find the halfway mark. Using a few pieces of twine, tie the bundle directly above and below the halfway mark.
Using your snips, carefully start cutting your bundle in half.
Repeat this same procedure with your second cinnamon broom. You should end up with four bundles of cinnamon broom, each tied at the top with twine.
The top halves of your broom bundles will be less “bushy” than the bottom halves so we’ll use those for the center of our broom bundle and we’ll put the bushy parts on the outside to help bulk it up and give it a nice full appearance.
Place your broom bundles around the base of your broom handle, making sure they cover at least 6 inches of your broom handle. Using your zip ties, loosely zip tie your broom bundles to your broom handle starting at the upper end of your bundle about 2 inches from the top. You want to zip tie it tightly enough that the bundles won’t fall out when you remove the twine holding the bundles together, but not so tight you can’t adjust the bristles as you want to give you the look you are going for.
Zip tie the bottom portion of your bristles approximately 3 inches or so below your first zip tie.
Once you are happy with how your bristles look, tighten your zip ties as tightly as you can and snip off the excess. You’ll want the zip ties so tight that they hold all the bristles together as well as to the handle of your broom.
Now take your twine and start wrapping your broom bristles. There are two ways to do this. You can cover up your zip ties with your twine, leaving it in place under the twine, or you can wrap your twine as tightly as you can just above your zip ties and then remove the ties when you’ve secured the bristles. It entirely depends on your own personal preference. To be honest, I used just the twine, tying it as tightly as I could and then snipping off the zipties once I was confident the twine would hold everything in place.
Secure your twine knots with a few drops of super glue and that’s it! Your authentic looking and very sweet smelling witch broom is now ready to be displayed!
Lean it up in the corner of your living room and fill your house with the sweet smell of the season, or take it outside to add that extra touch to your witchy display.
Just make sure whatever you do, not to let it fall over if you lean it on anything. That’s bad luck.
