I was spending hours upon hours on Pinterest one week – seems I’ve been doing that a lot through this small ‘remodel’ ‘redecorate’ process of my house – and found this amazing paper wreath from Living with Lindsay blog: http://livingwithlindsay.com/2009/11/librarians-please-avert-your-eyes.html and I thought it would go perfectly in my newly decorated bedroom (that recently has been named our ‘sanctuary’ and the title is completely appropriate). When I hung it up, I instantly loved it! I did this room in more neutral colors and wanted to keep the walls pretty basic, with just pictures of Brian and me instead of filling our walls with pictures of our children, as they are everywhere else in our house!
You will need:
- foam wreath – either at a dollar store or Michaels. I tried the dollar store first and didn’t have any luck, so I went to Michaels and bought a 12″ wreath
- Paperback novel ($1 at Dollar Tree – I needed 2 per wreath!)
- Brown and/or gray craft paint
- Glue gun & glue sticks
- Small strip of ribbon
- An unsharpened pencil (dull edge) for holding glued paper to wreath without burning your fingers!
- A few paper towels
I literally followed Lindsay’s instructions every step of the way but had to change a few things due to the shape of my foam wreath. Here we go:
1) I started with purchasing a paperback book at the Dollar Tree for $1. Makes it much easier to pain the pages when you only spent $1! I then used gray and brown craft paint that I had at home and used a cotton ball to apply it to the edges of the book. I then took a paper towel and just rubbed it up and down the pages to blend it and dry it up a bit. Leave it to dry for 10 minutes or so. Separate the pages and start tearing them out!
2) My foam wreath wasn’t quite as round as Lindsay’s. It was wider, therefore I needed to tweak my layers I built on a bit. I started just like Lindsay said, with tearing pages out of the book and ‘rolling’ them in varying methods. The tip here is to make sure you actually roll the pages and don’t fold or crease them. Lindsay posted a great video tutorial on her blog if you want to watch that for helpful tips.
Once you get your page rolled, apply some glue to the end of it and stick it to your wreath, ensuring the painted edges are facing out. Because my wreath wasn’t as round, I glued my rolled pages all around the first layer (below) then flipped it over and that became the back of my wreath.
Here is my pencil tool – another great tip from Lindsay – and totally necessary! I burned my fingers a couple of times even while using this! But its the perfect tool for this project.
3) Once my wreath was flipped and the front was facing up, I then needed to start my side layers. To do this, I created a little tab at the end of each rolled sheet and put some glue on the tab. I went all the way around and continued this layer up the sides of the wreath (I ended up doing 2 layers).
4) In certain areas, I flipped the tab over and had it facing down towards the opposite layer. I found that this was kind of up to my own discretion, depending on areas that were maybe more sparse.
5) The top part of the wreath is also more flat so creating a tab on the rolled sheet worked best. I did this all the way around (twice) and up the edge, which is the inside part of the wreath, which will also be facing out when finished.
6) Finishing it is fairly easy, just roll them like you’ve been doing, and glue them close to the bottom of the wreath. When you glue it on, the pages will be shorter than the width of the wreath. That’s okay!
7) You are just about done! All you need to do now is fill in those areas that might look more sparse, gluing to either the wreath or the paper around that empty spot. You want your wreath to look full and complete!
Here is my finished product:
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