A Summer Wreath

There is a great wreath on the front of this month's Green Craft Magazine.  I bought the magazine simply for the tutorial of how to make one.  Such a great idea, not only because it looks good, but because it uses items you would throw out otherwise.  In this case leftover paper towel rolls, and toilet paper tubes.  While I thought from the instant I saw it that it was a great idea, me being the impatient person I am I didn't want to wait long enough to accumulate paper towel rolls and toilet paper tubes, so I thought I would make my first one with cardstock I already had on hand.

I started with several sheets of white cardstock.  I used both Gina K 120# cardstock, and Stampin' Up! 80#.  My reasoning for this is that the Gina K cardstock would work well to give the center structure, but I knew the project would take quite a few sheets and I have more of the Stampin' Up paper.  Also, I thought the lighter weight cardstock would help keep the finished project from getting so heavy that it might fall apart after a while.  In the end I think I had three sheets of the Gina K, and five or six sheets of the Stampin' Up!.

Since this would be a summer wreath I decided to spray the white sheets with some shimmer mists.  I used purple and yellow.  The brand I have is fairly transparent, and as I only used a few sprays on both sides of the sheets of cardstock, the sprays gave the perfect hint of colour I was looking for.    First I cut about four strips from one of the Gina K sheets measuring 0.5" by 8.5".  The remainder of the sheet, along with the rest of the sheets of cardstock were cut in half lengthwise, then cut in 1" strips so that I had multiple strips measuring 1" by 4.25".  I made a rings out of these small strips with my glue gun, and once cool I 'smooshed' the rings a bit so that they made an almond shape.

In the magazine the original designer used coat hanger wire to make the center of the wreath.  I don't really like working with heavy wire since I am a bit accident prone, so decided to make a form using the heavier cardstock.  I used the longer strips to form a big ring, making the ring several paper layers thick, adhered together with generous amounts of hot glue. The ring measured about  4.75" wide and formed the base of my wreath.

The next part is the fun part, but it is tricky because I burned myself a couple of times so be careful if you decide to try it.  Using more hot glue, I glued a couple of rows of the almond shapes to the base ring, then continued to add more and more shapes until the wreath was the size I wanted it. I kept most of the shapes running in the same direction to mimic the way leaves might appear on wreath made of branches, but changed the direction of a few for interest.  This part is the easiest but took the longest.  When finished the wreath measured about 14" wide.

I decided I wanted to add flowers so I made some out of ribbon with Glubers.  You can read about the first time I did this here.  For the centers I used some vintage style brads and sniped off the prongs with my Tim Holtz scissors since the flower was too thick to poke them through, and adhered the embellishments with Glue Dots.  Before adhering the flowers to the wreath I decided I wanted to add some leaves, so I used my hand carved leaf stamp (you can read about here) with green ink on white cardstock, and cut out the images.  I adhered the leaves with a generous amount of hot glue first, and this gave a base for me to adhere the Gluber flowers too.

Overall the wreath was a bit time consuming but once all of the parts are ready the wreath can easily be assembled while watching TV.  Also, if you are using actual paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls the assembly will be quicker since you won't have to make your own loops, you can just snip them.  I am saving up my leftover rolls so that I can make more wreaths in the future, my plan is to make one for every season -- or just whenever I feel like it.  :)

I used the following products:

Cardstock: Gina K Designs Pure Luxury 120# Pure White, Stampin' Up!  Whisper White.

Shimmer Sprays:  Shimmerz Paints Spritz Chick-a-dee, Plum Pudding.

Adhesives:  Hot glue sticks from my stash, Glubers, Glue Dots.

Brads: Creative Charms Vintage Brads.

Ribbon:  Yellow American Crafts Satin ribbon, Pink and Purple satin ribbons from stash.

Ink: Color Box Fluid Chalk Ink Olive Pastel.