The Second Life of a Book: Wreath

Book wreaths; I've seen these everywhere lately and there's no denying how gorgeous they are. But who knew they are so simple and CHEAP too?!

As you know, I'm redecorating our master bedroom. I put myself on a strict budget. Ready for this?...$30. Yes, that's right. Thirty smackeroos. Any free (or almost free) project makes me salivate. Especially when the Momma confirmed that the current display above the headboard was...how did she put it...'too much!" Hopefully, the wreath will be a little more subtle in our new master bedroom.

There are tons of tutorials out there and I've read about half of them and this is what I used:

Dollar Store Styrofoam Wreath
Book - roughly 175 pages (I took it off my book shelf. I have no idea how it got there or if it's any good and I never planned to find out. We all have one or two of these in our library, right?)
Hot Glue Gun
Pins
Paint & Brush (or paper towel, whatevs)

I started by lightly dry brushing the edges of the book with paint. You could skip this step or replace it with this step from Rachelle at Fingerprints on the Fridge. I went with white paint, I know, risky! Hey, I live on the edge, what can I say. While I waited for the edges to dry I hauled all of my supplies up to the living room and set up -- there was a football game on. I'll sacrifice using my newly refurbed craft area in order to hang with the Hubs and watch football. So romantic, right?

Start with the bottom layer, a.k.a. the layer that will be touching the wall. I rolled and slightly crimped three or four book pages at a time. I tried to mix up the pattern on my rolls and crimps to avoid making it looke too uniform.I dropped a bead of hot glue down and attached the book pages, over the glue, with pins.

Like so.

The three pages you see in the front aren't attached. That's how I stashed my on-deck pages. Also, I think I should have glued the pages a little tighter together. It would have saved me a lot of filling later. 

Here's the back, completely covered. I flipped it over and grabbed the closest heavy object to flatten it a bit. The wood pile was right next to me, so on goes a log.

Next I started with the middle row. For this row, I folded the rolled paper about 1/4 of the way up and attached it to the wreath at the fold. The point of folding is to keep the book pages semi-even. If you don't fold, I'm sure a little extra scrunching at the end will even them out.

This is when I should have made a second middle row, but instead I moved right to the top and final row. Again, I folded them about 1/4 of the way up. The purpose of this fold was to give a little curve on the inside hole of the wreath.

At this point, I was practically done. The only thing left was to fill in any gaps. I wasn't meticulous about this part. I just filled spots where I could see the wreath (which was basically an entire new middle row). Then I scrunched to open the pages a bit. 

Here's the final product. So George-Us.

mmm...fluff

You have to try this!

<3 dani

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