Framed Book Page Egg Wreath

I have been dying to make a book page wreath since before Christmas and have just never gotten around to it. But with Easter rapidly approaching, I thought of a fun way to combine the two: The Framed Book Page Egg Wreath!! It’s a mouthful, but a good one! :)

If you want to make this project, gather together these supplies and get to work, because Easter will be here soon and you’re going to want to keep this out for a little while! You’ll also want to grab an empty frame. I used a square 15x15, but you could easily use any size, you’ll just need to adjust the size of your wreath base accordingly.

I got 2 bags of small Easter eggs from Hobby Lobby for $.67 each, and there were about 25 in a bag. The Dollar Store in town didn’t have any foam wreaths but they did have round floral planters, so I sawed off about an inch of that, wrapped it in newspaper, and used it as my wreath base.

I picked out a few old books with varying degrees of page yellowness, tore out some pages, cut the length a little longer than my eggs, and the width just long enough to wrap all the way around the egg. I used Mod Podge to glue the paper around the eggs and then set them aside to dry for 5 minutes or so. (I learned the hard way, that if you try to glue the paper on the whole egg all at once, the egg slides around in the paper and you get air bubbles. Don’t do this, you will become annoyed very quickly.) I had a little assembly line going with my eggs, which was a good way to give the eggs a little time to dry in between the steps, and helped me not to waste any of those precious naptime minutes.

Once the middle section was dry and could be a sturdy base, I cut slits on each end of the paper, and pushed them down so that one side of the egg was exposed.

Make sure that when you are pushing down the slits, that you peel them down just a bit further, ripping the paper a little. This ensures that they will lie flat when you are smoothing them down against the egg, and there won’t be any air pockets.

Otherwise it will look like this in the end. Not so pretty.

Once the paper is pushed down, smear the top of the egg with a good bit of Mod Podge. I used the Matte finish, so it didn’t matter if it got all over the top of the paper. Use your thumb to push down a few of the pieces at a time, smoothing them so that they lay flat and overlap a little.

Top with more Mod Podge, and smooth down the next few strips, working your way around the egg.

You will end up with a nice little overlap, and if you’ve been smoothing it out with your thumb as you go, it will look great!

Once I had a finished pile, I pulled out my wreath base, hung it on the frame and started gluing on the eggs. This was mostly to see how far this batch of eggs would take me and how many more I needed to make.

I hot glued the ends of the ribbon around the frame because I wanted the wreath to be centered, and I wanted to use the hardware that was already attached to hang the framed wreath on the wall.

I also hot glued the ribbon to the base of the wreath, so that I could put some eggs on top of the ribbon.

I then made a big floppy bow, glued the ends in the knot so that it wouldn’t come undone, and glued that to the top of the frame.

I loved the scrunched brown coffee filter idea that Jen used last month on her Burlap Valentine Heart, so I used a similar idea to make a flower. I just scrunched it up, inked the edges with a black stamp pad, added a second layer for extra fullness, and glued a little button to the middle.

And there you have it!! I love this wreath. It is so neutral and chic, and looks nice in every single room of my house. Now I just have to decide where to put it! I also need to figure out if I can pull it off after Easter is over :) A lack of pastels means I can keep it up, right? Furthermore, since I used an old frame that was holding a blah piece of art and already had the ribbon, glue and books, this project cost me less than $3!!!

If you decide to make these eggs I’m warning you that you will have a hard time deciding what to do with them, because the possibilities are endless. You could make a little egg tree or topiary. If you opt not to glue them down, you may want to give them their own little display.

Or you could use them to fill your glass containers and apothecary jars. I’ll just go ahead and say it, book page eggs are the new twine balls. :)

I shared this project last week on Tatertots and Jello, but am so excited to share it with you here, and I hope you like it as much as I do!! Please let me know if you make some of these eggs, I would love to see your take on them!

I’ll be linking to these great parties this week, so please stop by and check them out!

Read more...

Book Page Flower Wreath

Trust me, I am certainly aware of the overwhelming fame book page wreaths had last fall. Quickly after I saw the first tutorial on one I ran out and got all of the materials I would need to make it! I have a couple of versions going on throughout my house, but have tried to change things up a bit to reflect the personality of our family. One I wanted to show you today, that is by far my favorite and the easiest, is the paper flower wreath.

The book page flower is quite easy to make. I first stumbled across how great and versatile it was while trying to come up with something to put on my front door wreath. I messed around with some leftover materials until I came up with this:

I loved how the paper flowers turned out and have used them to make a few different complete flower wreaths. Here is a look at the most recent one I made for my daughter's nursery.

1) I trimmed book pages in a scalloped fashion as seen below. ( I painted the edges for this wreath to make it more colorful since it was for a children's room.)

2) Then I folded the scalloped edges in half twice and put a small dot of hot glue in the last fold. This is all the glue you need for each petal to hold them together.

2) Before adding petals to the foam wreath I chose, I completely cover it with book pages. Then, I created each flower one petal at a time. I used only 4 large petals for each flower.

3) Next, I added the flowers first in a straight path around the wreath, at the highest point when it was facing me. Only at the end did I go back and fill in the inside and outside gaps. For this particular wreath I mixed a children's book with dictionary index pages. This gave it a bit more color and character.

4) Once the gaps were filled in, I added a few personal touches. I added my daughter's name, Laurelei, in small painted wooden letters I bought at a craft store for $0.39, along with a brown ribbon for hanging on which I attached a big floppy bow.

(I simply used hot glue to attach both ribbon elements to the wreath wherever I wanted them.)

And that's it. It was a pretty simple process. It cost about $10.00 all together. It is MUCH less time intensive than the first few book wreaths I made because the petals take up so much space. The only real element of time for me was deciding where to hang it! (If you have noticed a pattern in my past few posts, it is that I have serious commitment issues when it comes to putting nails in the wall. We have a few too many that I know my husband is slightly less than pleased about...)

Despite all of the trial and errors, I think I have found the perfect place in the nursery to hang our newest paper creation...

Thanks again for stopping by. Check out these link parties we'll be connecting with and see what I am sure to be some fabulous ideas! And don't worry...next week my contribution will not be book related, I promise!

Read more...

Book Art

I am a major fan of the book page crafts. I have several versions of "book page wreaths" that you can find hanging throughout my house. However, working with all of these pages from books got me thinking, "what about the book covers?" I quickly started to realize my book covers were laying useless, and I could just not let this be!

So, here was my solution to that problem...

(Now before you cringe, I also have a solution for all of you book lovers out there. Trust me, my husband wouldn't just let me murder good literature for the sake of artwork. We simply reattached the book jackets to the classics, sans hardcover, and they are still very much readable! Mostly only the dictionaries and thesauruses will be used for other crafts later.)

Here is how I did it. I started with about 20 books, most of which were judged by their cover, so that they would look good in my dining room and/ or living room. (Though I did choose about 4 favorite titles to throw in the mix to make it a little more meaningful for our family.) I then simply removed the covers with scissors as seen below.

I used an $8 piece of birch wood from Lowes as the base. I chose this wood because it was light weight and would be easier to hang.

I did NOT glue anything down yet. I went down the side and around the perimeter to make certain their were no edges or gaps of the wood being seen.

When the entire perimeter was complete, I still did NOT glue anything down, but then made a second and third layer to give the piece more visual interest. I was happy at this point that I had not begun gluing, because I had to rework the layout SEVERAL times to make it look the way I wanted it too. I was after an appearance of the books coming out towards you at the center, so the thickness of the hardcover, mixed with its texture had to be played around with a bit.

Once I came up with something that worked, I began gluing down each cover, starting the corner and working my way around the perimeter again in the original pattern I had followed.

To hang it, I simply used picture brackets I also got from Lowes for about $2. I just measured three inches in from the top corners and screwed them in. Then I connected a thin gauge wire between the two brackets.

It only took about 2 hours from start to finish (minus finding the perfect place to hang it!), and cost less than $30.00 for all of the materials. In the end, I was pleased with how it turned out. As soon as I hung it on the wall (without waiting for Matt to help measure it out...oops...) I was pleasantly surprised to see how the piece seemed to bow at in the middle just like I had hoped. It looks great on the wall. After moving from its original place in the living room to the dining room, I have no intentions of taking it down any time soon!

I have been struggling with what to call it. I guess it would be reclaimed art of some kind. I have found myself in the past few days trying to tell people about it and saying, "well, its, uh book sculpture for the, uh, wall?" Makes no sense to me either, don't worry. So if you come up with something better, comment and let me know!

This week I will be linking up to the CSI project. Stop by and take a look!

Read more...