Paper Wreath

By Brett Lund

I have a lot of Halloween decorations. I have a whole lot more Christmas decorations. I have a few thanksgiving and fall decorations. So for this post I decided to show how to make a fall wreath that you can keep up from September all the way through November. It’s super easy and the results are quite stunning.

There were a few supplies that I needed to make the wreath.
· 1 small grapevine wreath
· ½ bolt of wired ribbon (you don’t have to have ribbon if you don’t want a bow)
· 3 pieces of Cordinations colored cardstock in orange, brown, and yellow
· Large brads
· Small hair rubber bands. I got mine from Walmart. It doesn’t matter if they are colored or clear because you will not see them.
· Extremely sharp and heavy duty scissors. I liked using the scissors by Tonic and Tim Holtz.
· Glitter glue or Stickles

Cut your paper to 5” square. In the wreath example, I made three different sizes of flowers. The sizes of paper was 5”, 4 ½”, and 4”. You will do the same for all three sizes.

Fold your paper diagonally in half.

Fold your paper diagonally in half again.

Fold your paper one more time diagonally in half. This time, the paper will be rather hard to fold if you have used cardstock. I find using a bone folder works well for this step. It helps you make strong creases.

Draw a curved shape on your leaf. If you are like me and can’t draw a curve if my life depended on it, I just punched a circle out of cardstock and traced it onto the triangle. I usually trace the circle in pencil that way if I need to erase it, I can do it. Using the Tim Holtz scissors cut out the petal.

You can see the shape is completely cut out. I like the Tim Holtz scissors because they are super sharp, but are really easy to cut the paper. It doesn’t kill my hands.

Unfold your flower. Turn it over so the back of the paper is facing up. With the Cordinations paper, it’s usually the non-textured side.

Take a large brad and attach a glue dot to the center of the brad, and place the brad in the center of the flower.

Grasp the paper flower and shape it around the brad. This is where every flower that you will do will not be the same. Just shape the flower petals. Be careful not to rip your paper. Wrap an elastic on the front of the flower. If you notice it doesn’t matter if your elastic is colored or not, because you never see it. It’s hidden by the flower center.

Fold the prongs on the back open and flat. This will make sure that the brad doesn’t come undone. At this time, I would also use my bone folder and fold the creases of the flower down.

You can either leave the flower un-distressed (right flower) or you can use sandpaper and distress the flower (left flower). Put glitter glue on the edges of the flowers if you want to add bling to your project.
Repeat the same step with the other flowers. For the wreath, I did 10 flowers of all three sizes.
Once I have done all my flowers and the glitter glue is dried, I use my hot glue gun and glue them to the grapevine wreath. Attach the bow to the top of your wreath, and you have a simple fall wreath that you can display for a few months.
Enjoy and happy crafting!