Remember when I told you guys right before Christmas that I had actually produced something kinda Martha Stewart/crafty-ish, but I had to wait to show it to you because I made it as a gift? Well, the gift was for Mama June, Russ’ other mother, and now that it has been safely delivered to her (wrapped in a classy black trash bag) I can finally give you all the lowdown!
Ok, here’s what I made– a big ol’ honkin’ wreath!
Isn’t it pretty? It’s made out of pages from a antique book– because seriously, what says ‘Merry Christmas’ to a former English teacher more than destroying a book?! And it was actually fun to make and pretty easy, too. I found a how-to tutorial video from a woman named Jenna de Angeles, who has a great crafting/design website– check it out if you really want to learn how to make one!
Here’s my Cliff Notes version:
You start by finding a vintage book (around 8 x 10 inches to make a wreath this size), hopefully one that has yellowing pages and that great aged look. I found this one for $11 at an antique mall.
It was perfect because it had lots of print and every page kind of looked the same– I think it was a record book of some kind, listing generations of Southern families. I took the book apart at the binding and tore the pages out in sections, trimming the edges with scissors to even them up. Then came the tricky part (at least for me)– rolling the pages into cones and securing them with a little piece of tape. It looked easy on the tutorial video, but it really took me a while to get the hang of it. More than a few pages were sacrificed in my Quest For The Perfect Cone… I finally figured it out and then I rocked it– I sat up in bed watching an old Christmas movie and produced about 120 of them one night!
Next, you staple each cone at the pointed end about 1 inch from the bottom. When you’re up to your hips in stapled cones, you get a piece of foam core board (like padded poster board, I got mine at Michael’s) and trace an 8 inch circle (I used a plate), then a 4 inch circle inside of that, and a dot in the middle. You get your hot glue gun and after placing cones at the 12:00, 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 points on the 8 inch circle, start filling in and glueing the stapled ends of the cones around the circle until filled. Then do the same thing around the smaller circle.
You can fill the center up with all kinds of things– the tutorial shows one with little red Christmas balls in the middle AND my favorite: some potpourri that had all kinds of natural things like acorns, nuts and little pieces of wood. I happened to have an unopened bag of some that looked almost exactly like the one Jenna used in the video in my closet, and I loved the way it looked next to the yellowed pages. Here I am, carefully arranging the potpourri and hot-gluing my little heart out:
You don’t HAVE to bite your bottom lip while working, but it helps.
Considering I’ve never made anything like this before, I think it came out pretty well! The tutorial really helped, because I could actually see all the steps in the process, and I could rewind and rewind a certain part until I finally got it if I needed to (like those dang cones.) Here’s a picture of my wreath next to a picture of Jenna’s:
Mine:
Jenna’s:
See? Idiot-proof!
Now doesn’t that make you wanna run right out and start tearing up antique books?!
