A New Wreath (Finally!)

So I’ve been putting the same handmade wreath on my door every Christmas for at least five years. It was time for a new one! I recently saw a wreath on Pinterest made entirely of paper rosettes and was inspired. Spent a couple days making 78 – yes, 78! rosettes, using die cutting pads by Tim Holtz and K&Company. The latter is by Brenda Walton; they call them “medallions” instead of rosettes. This was my first time using this die; I just love it.

I made the rosettes in batches; about 20 at a time. Cut paper into strips, die cut, fold, glue, assemble, then enhance each one with Stickles for some holiday sparkle. I used clear Stickles for three reasons: 1) They go with every color; 2) They tie all the rosettes together visually; 3) You can “mess up” and it won’t be noticeable! It can be difficult to keep on track when adding Stickles to the edges of the petals; colored Stickles would have made all the drips and flops very obvious.

Here are my finished rosettes, all lined up on the chest freezer! The freezer is a great place to do hot-gluing, Stickling (yes, I just made up that word) and other messy crafts, because clean-up is very easy and, more importantly, the cats are afraid to jump up there! (I do not know why.)

I used scraps of Christmas themed paper left over from several book projects, and about two bottles of Diamond Stickles. I’m not quite certain on the Stickles amount, as I actually used 3-1/2 bottles, but three of them were already used and half full or less. So I’m just guesstimating it was two bottles.

Awhile ago I found two straw wreaths at the thrift store for 50 cents each, so I decided to use one of those. I wrapped it with lace that had been on a $1.00 thrift-store pillow. There wasn’t quite enough to go around, so I added some from my stash that was approximately the same color. The lace from the edge of the pillow was straight and lace from the top of the pillow was gathered. I like the way the gathered lace ruffled up.

I had originally planned to use all the rosettes and just COVER that baby – but it didn’t look right no matter how many ways I tried to configure the rosettes. Finally I tried it with just one simple row of rosettes right on the top, and that worked out the best.

The pink velvet ribbon was left over from binding a spring-themed book and I had just enough to make a fairly decent bow.

Now what am I going to do with all these other rosettes? Good grief.