22 Mar 2010

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! :)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Otherwise it will look like this in the end. Not so pretty.
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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.
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Top with more Mod Podge, and smooth down the next few strips, working your way around the egg.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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I also hot glued the ribbon to the base of the wreath, so that I could put some eggs on top of the ribbon.
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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.
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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.
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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!!!
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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.
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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. :)
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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!



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