I got the idea from Vacuuming in High Heels and Pearls. She does an adorable wreath with paper bags, as well as one with newspaper. She uses a foam wreath form. I didn't have one hanging about that wasn't already spoken for, so I made some adjustments and made my project based on items I already had at home. See...thrifty. (Not to mention I'm just too lazy to go to the store all the danged time.)
The first step of this task is just bending up your wire hanger. I used a wire cutter to amputate the hook and then manipulated the rest. I mostly used my hands, but for the finer adjustments I used a pair of needle nosed pliers.
With the hanger all rounded, it was time to start filling up the loop. I grabbed some of my Sunday newspaper stash and sat down on the couch for some quality time with a circle punch and Duck Dynasty. Have you seen this show? It's on A&E and I might be mildly addicted. It could be the most redneck thing (yet still funny and not completely without sense) that I have ever been exposed to. I would totally hang out with them. They seem to have fun all the time, no matter what's going on.
Dang it. I am really good at tangents.
Anyway...I grabbed up my Fiskars 1 1/2" circle hole punch and started selecting sections with black and white text on at least one side. You'll want to stay away from using too many with colors on the undersides, but overall it really won't matter.
I punched out hundreds of these little buggars. I can't even tell you how much you'll need. I just punched until I ran out of paper from the section I was working on, then moved on to the threading. When I ran out of circles, I went back and grabbed another section of the paper. I kept doing this until I thought it was pretty well full.
Once you have your circles all punched out, it's time to prep them for threading. Fold the circle lightly in half like a taco. Don't form a seam, but hold your thumb and forefinger loosely together.
Using your other hand (or manipulating your hold if you're really dextrous), pin the other two sides together and press flat, forming a little flower shape. Crisply fold the pointed edge.
I used a Crop-a-Dile for all of my punching, but any hole punch will do. Just try and make your holes fairly close to the size of the hanger wire's circumference. If the holes are too large, the paper will spin and it's harder to cover gaps.
Punch a few millimeters from the edge. You want to be high enough that you're capturing all folds, but low enough that the frill will stick out beyond the hanger wire.
This process will take you a while. Trust me. I think I went through about 8 episodes of Duck Dynasty. But...I might have been distracted here and there as well.
Pack more newspaper on than you think you really need. Turns out, once I attached my decorations, they pulled the newspaper looser from one another due to weight. This resulted in some gaps where the wire hanger can be seen. I have to adjust those areas to thicken up the newspaper bunchings.
Once you have your newspaper all strung, wind the two ends of the hanger together, again using the needle nosed pliers.
To decorate my wreath, I again wanted to go fairly simple and (of course) inexpensive. I had some cheesecloth laying around the kitchen that does a fairly good replication of a spiderweb. I cut out three 1 1/2" strips of the cheese cloth and wound it around the wreath to get the look I wanted. I held the cheesecloth in place using a liquid adhesive.
After that, I grabbed some of the cardstock bats that I had cut using my Pazzle. They were leftover from the Halloween Banner project when I was trying to decide what size to use. I used three of them and again adhered them using my liquid adhesive.
It still needed something more. I broke into my chipboard stash and painted "boo" using my oh-so-favorite paint, Asphalt from Making Memories. I linked the letters together by hole punching and stringing with wire. I attached them to the cheesecloth on the wreath using a few pop dots. (Hint: It's best to attach the extra stuff to the cheesecloth instead of the newspaper. That way you can still mess around with the lineup of the paper to cover holes where the hanger wire might show through.)
Lastly, I folded up a bow and attached it using a pipe cleaner. For those of you who aren't certain how to make a ribbon craft bow, the tutorial below can be really helpful.
And that's it! Now I have to find a good place to hang it up.
This post is part of a series. For more posts on Creative Crafting, click here.
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