Erin from Chris, Erin & Jayce: Book Page Wreath

Hello everyone at Tatertots and Jello! I am super excited to be guest blogging for Jen today! In fact, when I first found out that I would be doing this, I called my husband to tell him the news, and when he asked what I wanted to do to celebrate, I exclaimed, “Go to Hobby Lobby!!” I was being serious. But anyway, this post isn’t about my dorkiness so I’ll move on.

I am lucky enough to stay home with this little monkey, and spend my time taking care of these two handsome boys, dabbling in photography, occasionally going to the gym, making things for my home, and blogging about it all.

When we got married almost six years ago, we knew that we would soon be moving to Europe, so we agreed that we would buy nothing for the house, since it would just be sitting in storage. We then spent 3 years in Scotland, where again, no stuff for the flat since we would eventually leave it all behind when we moved back. We bought a house in the summer of 2008, and I was completely overwhelmed with what to do with all of the bare white walls and rooms to fill, because it’s hard to make a house feel “homey” when you have no stuff! My newborn baby and I spent plenty of days watching HGTV for inspiration. Last fall I successfully made these great wall hangings and I realized that I could literally take matters into my own hands to get my house the way that I want it to look. And I haven’t looked back since.

I sometimes make stuff for my son,

sometimes for myself,

but mostly I make stuff for our home.

Now, onto today’s project. I have been dying to make a book page wreath since before Christmas and just never got around to it. But with Easter coming up soon, 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 15×15, 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 a lot 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 would take me and how many more eggs 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!

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 hope you like these as much as I do! Please let me know if you make some, I would love to see what you come up with! And please stop by and say hi at Chris, Erin & Jayce!