Pointy Cone Book Page Wreath

Well, I have "pinned" so many book page wreaths on my 

Pinterest board that it's about time I actually MAKE one.
A sponge can only soak up so much water. 

What I started out in my mind to make and what I ended
up with are two different things.  I would say that if 
Miss Mustard Seed's wreath and Euchristea's wreath got
married and had a baby, it might look like my wreath.

        Miss Mustard Seed                             Eucharistea                                     Miss Kopy Kat

With all this talk about marriage and babies, a little 

genealogy is in order.   Miss Mustard Seed cites that she got

her idea for a book page wreath from Wendy at

 The Shabby Nest blog in 2009.  Wendy cites that she got the
idea from a Pottery Barn catalog.  Eucharistea cites that she
got the idea for her wreath from The Nester who credits
the Living With Lindsay blog. Lindsay says that she saw a 
book page wreath at an arts and craft fair.  

Whew! All the above highlighted links are to the 
actual tutorial which, I found out, is not always easy to locate. 

I didn't have a book I wanted to tear up to make the wreath
so I got one for fifty cents at the thrift store. It was about
20 years old but the pages didn't look old enough for the look
that I wanted, so I aged the pages some more.

(This post would have been too long to include that process so I
did another post about that.  If you would like to see it, click on "Aging Book Pages". 

Sorry to tear up your book Mr. Author but I did read some of
it while I was making the wreath. 

I had intended to use the whole page to make the cones for
the wreath but I could not figure out how to make the point
come to the center of the cone and it align with the inverse 
point that was made with the edges of the page.  

Looking back, I don't know why I didn't like this. 
(So, now that I have made my first book page wreath, I don't care if the points line up for
future wreaths.  It's like your first baby...everything needs to be just right.  I love that segment
in the original "Parenthood" movie when Steve Martin is talking to the psychiatrist and says
something like: "You know with your first child, you rush it to the emergency room if it gets
a nick or cut.  By the time the third one comes along, you let 'em juggle knives.")

However, I found that if I tore the page in half at its "equator", 
that the point I wanted was easier to accomplish.

Bend the page in half, crease, and tear to give another 
ragged edge to work with, if you like that look. 

Tearing the page in half will, of course, make your cones 
smaller so keep that in mind before you tear. You can still make
a big wreath out of them, but it will take more cones to fill it. 
You can follow this tutorial even if you don't tear the cones.
Your wreath will have longer "rays" on it. 

Decide which of the four points on your page looks the most
interesting...that is the part of the page that will be most visible.

With the point towards you, roll the short side of the page
underneath the long side if you want the points lined up.
If you are not a perfectionist, just roll the paper up into a
pleasing looking pointy cone.

Without crushing your "good" point, fold the end of the "bad" 
point down and staple it shut to secure your roll.
My rolls ended up being about 4 1/2" long. 

As I went along, I found that horizontal staples on
 the very end held better than vertical ones. 

Some rolls needed  staples on the sides (put them very 
close to the "bad end") to hold it all in place.

Here is the backside of some of the rolls:

Roll up and staple some pointy cones to get you started.

For a wreath base, I just used a piece of cardboard box and
cut 10" circles out of it.  I thought I would need to glue both of them together for strength but one was sufficient.  

 With this 10" base, when the wreath was 
finished it was 16' in diameter. 

The original idea was to have a hole in the middle of the wreath
but I wasn't sure how wide to make it to fit the cones, etc.
In the end, I liked it not having a hole so it never got cut
but you certainly could cut a hole in yours.

After all the work that went into tearing, aging, rolling the 
pages, I had "stage fright" to actually start gluing the cones
to the cardboard.  It helped me to do a trial run of just 
placing some cones on the cardboard and playing with 
their arrangement.  I finally took the plunge and put hot
glue on the backside of the cones near the stapled end. 

For the first row, I tried to keep the points about the same 
distance apart.  I used a ruler and measured before gluing... 
"First Baby Syndrome", you know. 

The second row did not take measuring.  The points of the rolls 
were placed in the "V" shapes left by the first row of cones. 

By the third row, it was getting crowded so the placement
 of the cones went to "skip two, then glue". 

If I had wanted a cut out center, this is the time that
 I would have done it...just FYI.  
A confident crafter would have cut it out before
even starting to glue but I wasn't sure how the cone
 placement would work out.  Because I hope to use the wreath
for different occasions/seasons, I decided to not have a hole
but to fill the whole cardboard circle with cones and have a 
center that could be changed out. 

To make the center easily interchangeable, a small piece of 
dry florist/craft foam was cut...

...and wrapped like a little present in part of an aged page...

(I used straight pins to hold the paper on the foam, you could probably glue it instead if needed.)

...hot glued the cube and put it in the very center of the wreath. 

The wreath's first holiday to be used for is Valentine's Day.
To go along with the aged paper look, I bought vintage-looking
Valentine cutouts by K&Company to use on the mantle vignette.

(Did I mention that they are ALREADY CUT OUT?  and some are ALREADY GLITTERED? Yeah!)

The little Valentine clown had an outfit that looked nice with
the aged paper so she she got chosen to be the center. 
She got a tiny piece of foam glued onto her back so that it
could be impaled with a toothpick...

...and inserted into the aged-paper-wrapped foam on the wreath.

This way, hopefully, the center of the wreath can be changed 
out as needed without bothering the actual cones. 

 Miss Mustard Seed's wreath tutorial reminded us to
 "add the ribbon hanger before you start adding cones" but
(in the words of Steve Martin) "I Forgot".  Yikes! Those
paper cones crush easily but gotta turn the wreath on its 
face to add the hanger. Hot glue a piece of ribbon in a loop. 
If you don't mind your ribbon showing, you can make it longer.

After an entire Super Bowl (including the 34 minute blackout)

of gluing (and making some more book page rolls) it is finished!

Like a new mother showing off pictures of her firstborn
here are MORE photos:

Aging Book Pages

For a Valentine's Day mantle, I wanted to make book 

page wreaths.  First, I needed book pages to accomplish

this goal.  My favorite book page wreaths that I have seen

other folks make have used pages that look old.

I don't have old books that I want to destroy to make wreaths

so I got a book at the thrift store for 50 cents to tear up.

The book was about 20 years old but not old enough looking.

I needed lots of book pages to make the wreaths so I wanted

a method of aging the pages that would allow me to age

 them without a lot of time and attention to each page. 

Here's how I aged the pages for the wreaths if you 

would like to know how:

Tear all the pages out of the book and put them in batches

 in a pot of very strong tea.  Don't keep the heat on for this. 

Put each page in individually and push it down into the tea

with a utensil to make sure the whole page is completely wet. 

Let the pages sit in the tea for about an hour.

(This one container of  brewed tea stained the whole book but in about six batches.
To do the whole book took over a day....not of constant time but soaking, laying out, drying
one batch then repeat. I reused the same tea for the whole book.  One batch can be soaking
while another one is drying, etc. )

This is a photo of a before and after of a tea-stained page.

 The tea-stained paper does dry lighter than it looks when it
first comes out of the tea bath but it is darker than 
the original non-tea stained page. For many folks, this is
enough aging...you don't have to do more processes.

  

To make the pages look even older and more distressed

here are a couple more things you can do also. 

Before you put the wet tea-stained page on the newspaper

to dry, sprinkle instant tea on the newsprint.

You may or may not like how much the instant tea 

ages the pages.  I found that it was hard to control how the 

pages would turn out with this method but it did produce

very interesting results (if you like heavily distressing). 

An easier, but not as dramatic, aging method is to mix a lot of

water and a little bit of brown acrylic paint and spray the pages

as soon as you put them out of the tea bath onto newspaper. 

The brown paint that you see below dries lighter than 

it looks when the page and the spray are wet. 

The aged pages actually feel like old paper after these processes. 

In the photo below, you can see the pages and the 

 binding they came out of...no going back in now.

Here is one wreath that used some of these aged pages:

If you would like to see the tutorial click
 "Pointy Cone Book Page Wreath".

I love so many styles of book page wreaths that I have seen.

 I hope to get a couple more of my favorites (that don't take too

much time) made for the mantle. 

 

I'm sharing this post over at

Tutorials Tips &Ttidbits @ Stone Gable Blog

Very Versatile Vases

I started keeping my eyes open for good deals on glass 
apothecary jars and vases when I needed some about five
years ago for the candy table at my daughter's wedding.

I learned from having those first vases that they are very versatile.

I'm always misspelling the word "versatile" so I looked it up in

the dictionary so you would not be snickering when you saw

the title of this blog post spelled wrong.  The dictionary says

that the word "versatile" means

1. changing readily

2. embracing a variety of skills

3. having many uses or applications

Those definitions describe my clear glass vases perfectly!

They can be used in so many different ways.

They adapt to the occasion they are used for.

They are like chameleons. 

My stash of clear vases has...ummm...grown since those first

ones I bought for the wedding.  You can find them fairly

inexpensively at craft stores and discount stores. 

Recently, I even dressed some of my vases up in sweaters.

Sweaters For Your Vases

If you would like to see more photos of any of these projects, click on the highlighted link. 

Sometimes the vases are main characters of a vignette...

Submerging Flowers

Summer Pottery Barn Copy Cat

Greenery In Glass

Greenery In Glass

Terrarium Tips

A Variety of Vases

Use Epsom Salt As Snow

Other times the vases are more part of an ensemble cast:

Crazy Over Chicken Wire

Black Birds Of A Feather

DIY Coral

 I love little vases too.  

They come in such cute shapes and are cheap.

  It only takes a single bloom to make them pretty.

I may, or may not, have added to my "collection" 
when a friend asked me to help decorate

 tables at her daughter's wedding reception.

Table Runners Add Pizazz

You can even change the color of the clear glass vases

to match a party or season of the year:

Making Jars Look Vintage and "Perfect Mason" Jar Paint Technique 

You might even say that I have become a hoarder of clear vases.

Alison of Polohouse blog says, "Hoarders...collectors...
a thin line...but hey, if you have to hoard...oops 'collect' 

something it might as well be fantastic and beautiful".

   She also says, "It's not hoarding if it looks nice". 

Well, I'll let you decide.  Here are a some vases that
 have been in my carport for a few weeks:

I can find lots of excuses not to put them up because I have to

"tote" them up these stairs to place them in their storage space:

Then I have to walk like the Hunchback of Notre Dame
 (due to  low beams) to get them on their shelves
 at the far end of the attic.

Sometimes the vases get loaned out to go to other folks' 
houses for parties so I don't totally hoard them for myself.

If you don't have some clear glass vases, you should buy a few
when you see a good price on them (even Dollar Tree has some).
You don't have to go cray-cray with them like I have. 

For other ideas on how to use clear glass vases, 

Pottery Barn has good pictures and instructional videos.

I'm sharing this post over at the monthly Organizational
Blog Party at The Dedicated House