What's Black & White and READ all over?

Answer:  My new diy book wreaths!

Okay, bad joke. 

Click here for an update to this post. I have altered my wreaths a bit!!! Much better now. 

  

I have been eying these book wreaths all over the net. They are made out of book pages. They feel like they would be a display in Anthrpologie, so of course I loved them. Once I realized how easy they are to make, I was on it like white on rice. The two I loved the most were from The Shabby Nest and My Pink Life

 

The Shabby Nest

My Pink Life

After completing (not one, not two, but THREE wreaths) I still like their's better. Mine came out too round. Okay, that sounds crazy that a wreath is round and I don't like it that way, but look back at the photos above. They are not a perfect circle, I see a bit of jaggedness. That non- perfect circle is what drew me in. Maybe I will make some new ones and give mine away. Anyways, enough of my blabbering. Here is how I made my wreaths:

I started with a regular ol' book. Wait... let me back up a minute and tell a quick story. I kind of got in trouble with this book. See, I have this pile of books that I am giving away to Goodwill. Well Ryan must not have known that this was a "give-a-way" pile because he came home with some books that our friends gave him. (Sorry Matt & Sam, but that means you.) He set them in this pile. So naturally I went to get a book out of my "getting rid of pile". There was a book about the symbolism of a dollar bill. The pages looked really cool, there was some black and white images and a cool boarder aorund each page. I thought it would be great for a wreath. Since it was in the no longer being used pile, I tore it up and used it. When I finished it, he asked what book this wreath was made from. Whooops... I guess that one was suppose to be a keeper. He gave me a little bit of a hard time until I told him I would go check it out from the Library for him. Problem solved. 

Moral of the Story: make sure you definitely have a book that can be torn up, and then double check!

I painted the edges with some brown paint. I read to do that somewhere, but I don't think this step is nessasary at all! I only did this to my first wreath and skipped the paint for the others.

  

 Then I tore out a bunch of pages as close to the spine as I could. I rolled them in cone shapes, and put a bit of hot glue on each.

 

 For my first wreath I purchased a wooden wreath base from Michaels for $1.99. For my other two I just cut out a circle with a hole in the middle of it. I used thick craft paper that I had around, and traced the circles with a dinner plate, and a salad plate.

  

 Wine was an important step in this process! Sip, glue, sip glue, glue glue, sip, sip. It goes much better this way.

Above, you can see another wreath that I was working on that night. I'll show you that soon. 

Once I had the base of paper cones, I just kept on glueing them on to fill any holes. I did about 3 layers. 

Here is my first wreath (my favorite because of the images, and boarders on the pages). I hung it on my kitchen door. The door that has still not been painted white, just primed (over really old oil based paint). 

  

  

  

  

Since my other two were going to be be near each other I used the same book, a book with more pages. I had two copies of Pride & Prejudice, so there was my answer. Jane Austin became a wreath, or two. I added some purple ribbon and hung them from two old windows that came from my parents rental property when they had new windows put in. I hung the windows on each side of the fireplace a while ago, but they just looked so plain. I think this is exactly what they needed.

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