Hello again!
I hope you had a great weekend enjoying the beginnings of Summer. I wanted to share another post from a few months ago of this great vintage book paper wreath I made at Christmas time. I searched through my favorite craft pinning site (a gold star for whoever guesses what that is) and came across several beautiful wreaths to choose from. I picked this one from jadeflower. I put my own twist on it and this is what I came up with.
For some reason this year I had a little trouble remembering to take photos of the step-by-step processes I took for many of the crafts I have posted. Shame on me. Really, though, because that's the most important part. I guess I was just so harried for time, I forgot. I'm usually a stickler for these things, just look back in the blog and see for yourself. Go ahead...I'll wait...
You back? Find anything you like back there? I hope so!
Anyway, I'll try to make it up to you with my future posts. I've got a lot coming up. There might be a French chair make over, a couple of side table make overs, a couple of cane back chair re-do's...like I said, I've got plenty of opportunities to make it up to you.
This wreath was originally made for the Holidays, but I have left it up in my kitchen (away from the stove so it doesn't get splattered) since Christmas and it still 'works'.
I went to a yard sale the Autumn before and bought up a bunch of their books on the last day, right before close, so they were an absolute STEAL! Now, I don't necessarily condone damaging books, but these were yard sale finds and were already pretty old and damaged. I bought several that I kept for entertainment, as well, though.
Anyway, I got all of my materials ready that I needed for my wreath:
* Tons of book pages. You want to make sure you have plenty on hand to go through so there is a variety of page colors, edges, and actual prints to choose from. (note the fox, chapter numbers and titles I worked into the folding process)
* Glue gun and glue. In the tutorial link above, she used a glue stick. This is fine, it will hold. But, from my scrapbooking days, eventually anything I glued with a stick came loose after a while. Tacky glue will definitely hold-forever-but I just love my glue gun. The only thing I don't care for is the 'strings' you have to watch out for. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I will pick every string off of a project. It's just unsightly to show your glue.
* Scissors, circle cutter, punches, embellishments, chipboard letter, craft paint and paint brush, glitter...anything you might want for your center, IF you want one. There are tons of beautiful wreath tutorials out there without centers. Even some to look like Dahlias. I'm SO doing those next!
* Cardboard or another sturdy base for your rolls
* Mono filament (fishing line), twine, ribbon, string. Anything you like to hang your creation.
* A small square of felt to cover your glued-on hanger
Here is the wreath in all it's glory. Scroll on down to learn how I did it. Again, I'm truly sorry I did not think to take pics during my process. I'll be working on another project soon so I'll make it up to you...promise. In the meantime, search these out on the web. There are some fabulous girls out there with great blogs! (uh...just don't go too far, ok? ;)
Ok, first thing you want to do is roll your book pages. I experimented with the size I wanted. I used a large hardback book. I took it apart first, so that my pages would be free, trimmed off any glue left from the binding, and separated them a little by color. Some older books yellow with age, and I love that, but some of the pages within the same book don't do this. I just sort of flipped through it and separated them. When I had a good pile of pages, I started to roll. Now, this wreath is pretty darn big because I used a large book. The smaller the book, the smaller the wreath, obviously. But, I did try to trim the book pages down a bit to make the wreath a little smaller. You have to trim equally on the bottom and the one side that won't show as much, so that it doesn't look like they've been trimmed. This didn't work out the way I'd hoped. You're better off just using different sized books. And the fact that it was hardback vs paperback does not matter at all. Just get one and start crafting!
Figure out which pages you want to use, like what chapter numbers you like, any pictures, words, titles, etc. Then you roll the paper like a paper cone, starting on one corner. Put a small dab of glue after you make your initial roll to secure, and roll it up. You can go as tight or loose as you want, you'll figure out what you like, and I put a little glue along the ridge where the side of the page lay against the roll. One down, A LOT more to go! Hey, it's meditative...and relaxing! If anything, you'll get a lot of thinking done. Put on some music or catch up on a show while you roll...
Next, is the assembly. You want to cut a circle of cardboard as a base that your rolls will be glued to. Then you want to lay those rolls out before you glue to make sure everything fits. Ok, here's where a leetle frustration might come in. Don't get scared. When you are laying things in a circle, like these rolls of paper, it might take a few tries to get them to lay where you want them. You need to figure out how far 'in' to the circle you need to go to fit them all in snugly and with as few gaps a possible. Sometimes this is near impossible because of the size of your circle and the size/number of your rolls. If you play around with it, it will work out, but you don't want to start gluing until you at least do a dry run first.
In my photo below do you see how there appears to be two layers of rolls and cardboard? It's the only way I could fill in the gaps that I couldn't fill in with my initial layer. I laid it all out in a way that was pleasing to my eye and that looked even and symmetrical. But, still there were gaps that I couldn't quite fill with more rolls. So, I glued it down this way. Then I identified where the gaps were, flipped the whole thing over, and glued the few extra rolls to the back of the first cardboard circle, to fill it in. I must say, after I was done, the wreath was fuller, and you can't even tell it was a "mistake". I used the mono filament for a hanger. I did use hot glue for this, as well, but you can use tape or anything you like. If you use hot glue, you have to be careful because it will melt your filament. I measured my length of filament so that it would not show while hanging, tied the two ends together a couple of times to get a good sized knot, and put a dab of hot glue right on the cardboard. I let that set up for a few seconds and placed my filament, knot side down, into the glue. I had cut a small square of felt to cover this and glued that down over the knot, as well. Then I made a second cardboard circle to cover the back for aesthetic reasons and glued that right over the second layer of rolls.
Whew! That part is done!
Here's the back all finished and glued. You could even cover the cardboard with paper or felt if you wanted, but you never see it, so why not save a step? This wreath is work enough, right?
Alright, now for the embellishment. I folded a cute little paper medallion out of a smaller page. I learned how to make these from searching Pinterest and founds this tutorial from cityfarmhouse.com. I didn't use as many pieces of paper, just two, but it was all I needed for this wreath. I just "fan folded" two equal sized pieces of paper, as shown in the tutorial, and glued them together. This time I did use the Tacky glue. I also glued the folds where I felt they might spread out too far. While I let that dry, I made my center. I played around with colors and ideas and settled on this. I used a circle cutter and cut this circle out of black textured cardstock. I put a little Tacky glue on some scrap paper and rolled the edge of the black paper lightly in it, then I rolled it in some vintage German glass glitter. While I let that dry, I used a scalloped paper punch to cut a second circle of cream cardstock. I have a bunch of chipboard letters so I painted our initial with black craft paint. I punched a little butterfly from a piece of the scrap book paper left over and when all the pieces were dry, I assembled it all with Tacky glue. I then glued the finished medallion to the wreath with hot glue.
Done! I just LOVE it. I recently went to the local antique shop uptown and came across some very old books of sheet music. I have seen a lot of fab projects using old music pages, but wondered where in the world I was going to find some. It was my lucky day, because I came away with a bunch. Can't wait to show you what I do with that!
I'm so excited about these types of paper projects, I just might dedicate a whole post to introducing you to some fabulous blogs out there with the most beautiful and easy projects to fill your summer with...and get a head start on the holidays! Wouldn't that be nice? Having things done months in advance for Christmastime? Less messin' = less stressin'!
Have a great week and as always, thanks so much for being here. I truly appreciate you.
Nanette
