shortcake + shoes: .book page flower wreath.

since the days of our wedding have gone by, my craftiness has taken a back burner to my bakiness (yes, that is my new word.) however, i recently had the luxury of a fall break from work and i guaranteed my inner-crafty-girl a chance to strut her stuff.

i saw an image of a wreath that i couldn't get out of my head and have been dying to make ever since. the concept seemed simple enough. and after a little practice at it, the method began taking shape.

to create this paper flowered wreath, you first need paper. for me, books are one of my passions and i wanted to make my flowers out of book pages, representing the beauty in the written word. i found a used book at goodwill and repurposed it. please don't use a book that you or someone you know may want to read. this was not one of those such books.

begin by putting several pages together for more depth to your flower. when i first started, i was using one page at a time and the flowers were lacking in the petals department. start with a pencil at the center of your page and begin spiraling your way to the outside. here are two lessons i learned the hard way. lesson 1: do not make lots of thin spirals because the flower will be shallow when finished. i corrected this after about half a dozen flowers. lesson 2: do not use a red ink pen because you are too lazy to walk two rooms over and pick up a pencil. i did not correct this, sue me.

after you have your spiral drawn, use scissors (duh) to cut it from the outside working your way in. don't let your pages separate as you cut.

starting at the inside of your spiral, begin folding/wrapping/spiraling the paper to form a flower. i liked to roll mine super duper tight and then let go at the end to unfold to the shape i wanted. hot glue the ends to the main flower and voila- bee-u-tee-ful!

after making soooo many paper flowers, throwing some away, catching up on worthless television watching, scolding your dogs for destroying some perfectly good book page flowers and praising yourself not burning a body part with the hot glue gun, you are ready to move on to the wreath.

yes, you can buy a ready-made wreath at a craft store, but they are way more expensive than what i'm about to tell you. go to your local hardware store. you can be like me and wander around for 25 minutes up and down every aisle with a sense of pride looking for this thing that you just know exists OR you can go straight to an employee and ask for help. better yet, keep your independence by heading immediately to the plumbing section and looking all through it for pipe insulation that looks like a pool noodle, but in black. it is around one buck and works just as well as the expensive stuff at the craft store.

you're going to cut about 1/3 of the length of the cylinder off and then duct tape the 2 ends of the remaining 2/3 to create your circular wreath.
with whatever ribbon tickles your fancy, begin hot glueing and weaving it around your homemade wreath.