Good Afternoon!

I hope everyone survived their holidays. I had a lovely month of December, but as some may have noticed, I only made it to December 16th with our advent. I just ran out of energy and time to keep up with the daily projects and make Christmas presents for my family. I still have the projects in my workbook, so you will probably see them at some point in the future.

Winter has finally hit our area and we have real snow. I like the white better than the blah of brown and gray, but I really needed a spot of color in my house to brighten up my day, so my new spring wreath was born.

Materials:

• 6″ cardboard circle
• wire for the wreath hanger
• paper cutter
• scrapbook paper
• hot glue gun and glue sticks

First, cut out your 6″ cardboard circle. My circle cutter only goes up to 5 1/2″ so, I added about a half inch to the outside of the mark and cut there with scissors.

Next, use some floral wire to make the hanger, poke it through the cardboard and leave the long ends to be inside the wreath where they won’t be seen.

Then, cutting the scrapbook paper. The cones of the flower wreath are made up of 4″ pieces of scrapbook paper. For easy accounting:

• 24 – 4″ pieces dark color
• 24 – 4″ pieces medium color
• 24 – 4″ pieces light color
• 15 – 3″ pieces medium color (optional)
• 15 – 3″ pieces light color (optional)
• 6 – 2″ pieces yellow

This came out to 6 sheets of 8 1/2″ x 11″ each of the dark, medium, and light colors and one sheet of yellow.

It makes rolling the cones much easier if you start the curve before you begin gluing. I took my ring mandrel and wrapped my squares of paper around it to get the curve started. You could use anything for this, a bottle of glue would work, just as an example.

Then, you add a little hot glue to one corner of the paper.

Finally, you curl the opposite corner over the glue to make a cone and hold for a few seconds for the glue to set.

Pro for Hot Glue – It dries very quickly

Con for Hot Glue – It is VERY hot and you end up with strings to clean up

I made all of my cones at one time then started attaching them to the wreath. They stack neatly together to save space and it was a lot of fun to quickly put the wreath together after all the prep work.

For attaching the cones to the cardboard, you want a tiny bit of hot glue on the narrow tip of the cone.

Start gluing your cones to the cardboard, keeping the wide ends of the cone touching and the cones perpendicular to the edge of the cardboard. The tips with the glue will not touch each other.

Above you can see my first round of the dark color and the mess of hot glue. Don’t worry, no one will see this part once it is finished.

For the second and all consecutive rings, you will need to flatten the tip of the cone a bit and put the glue on the flat edge. This makes attaching the cone to the cardboard ring much easier.

Above, my second ring of medium color is done and I have started on the third ring with my light color.

Third ring is done.

Fourth ring in the same light color is done and I am ready to start the yellow ring of the flower center.

With the yellow ring, I ended up having to squeeze a finger through the cone to press the glue down. There is very little space in there for a hand.

This part is optional, but if you did cut the 3″ squares, here is where you glue them inside the 4″ cones. For this wreath, I alternated the light and medium colors and put them inside the outer dark ring color. Using more hot glue, put a dab on the 3″ cone and press to the inside of the 4″ cone.

Finally, there is the clean up of the hot glue strings. This doesn’t take long, but it is definitely a necessary step.

And Voila! A lovely spring wreath to add a pop of color to your home and door.

Above you see a side view of the wreath.

Here is the first paper flower wreath I made Tuesday. It is in red tones and I used a 2″ x 12″ strip of yellow paper to make the flower center. I cut a 2″ circle of red paper, glued the yellow spiral to this and then glued it into the center of the flower. I much prefer the look of my new teal version with the center being made of small yellow cones.

Also, you can see in the red toned wreath, I put my 3″ cones in the third ring instead of the first. You can make every wreath different by where you add final touches. You could even put them inside every cone on your wreath and make a really intricate flower.

Have fun and play with color. Let me know how yours turns out!

Happy Crafting,

Kristin