Book Page Wreath Tutorial

Book page wreaths have been all the rage for awhile around blogland.  You can even buy some premade on Etsy.  I am a little late to the book page wreath bandwagon but it is so worth it to be late than not at all. 

Because these babies are drop dead gorgeous.

Your non blog obsessive real life friends will be so wowed.  And your introspective friends will wonder if the particular book page words have any special meaning {um, no...I will explain in a minute}.

And for paper, this project really makes a statement. 

What you will need:

-Wreath form {I have seen most tutorials suggest using a foam one but they didn't have any at the two stores I tried.  It would definitely be easier to glue on to foam but since my wreath hangs on the mirror, seeing the twine reflection is much prettier than foam unless I wrapped the form which would only make this project one step longer which I am happy to be without because though this wreath is easy to make, it is slightly time consuming when you are an impatient perfectionist.}

-Book pages {I picked up the biggest book I could find at the Dollar Tree after reading a suggestion to do that somewhere.  I would take a little more time next time to check the content of the book because I am pretty sure I came across the F-bomb and some other questionable words that may not be the most ideal wording for a wreath in this book!  Of course I left those pages out.  But that is totally up to your discretion.}

-Hot glue

Directions:

1. Cut out a whole bunch of leaf shapes.  I folded over the pages so I could cut multiples at a time.

2. Fold the leaf down the middle to create a leaf crease and glue.

 

3. Going the same direction, glue leaves all the way around the wreath.  There really is no technique here.  Every other leaf I had facing the right or left and when you finish you can always fill in gaps that don't look balanced.  It is more about how full you want the wreath to look.  

And three steps later you have a finished wreath!  It took me an hour or so to make while sitting in front of the TV with my husband one evening.

While I was at it I also made another book page wreath using a tutorial I found over at Jones Design Company.  This wreath is a little more complicated so I didn't even bother to try to explain when Emily has already explained it so well.  

The only adjustment I made was that I saw a wreath on Etsy that was not as full looking as Emily's that I wanted to recreate.  In order to do that, I made my creases looser and at a slight angle.

It's hard to explain but as you see the front crease is lower than the back crease whereas Emily's creases are all even.  This strategy makes for a more open and less stuffed feeling wreath.

It's like a beautiful collection of paper ruffles all over a wreath.  Breath taking to say the least.  There are a lot of paper wreath tutorials out there so if you would like to see some more ideas I added some of my favorites to my wreath Pinterest board.

And if you want to go book page crazy, I really love Nester's book page themed party.