You see, while I loved Smith's message, I don't exactly share much of her decorating taste. Disco balls, antlers, and giant fish? Yikes! Not my thing. But there was one item from her book that I instantly fell in love with and have been thinking about ever since: her book page wreath.
Maybe you've seen these around the internet, I feel like they started popping up all over as soon as I put the book down. As soon as I realized there were tutorials for how to DIY this wreath, I knew I had to try it out myself. Now, crafting and DIYing is not really my thing, so this project intimidated me a bit. I waited until school was over and I could dedicate a few focused evenings to this project (no kids around), and I finally got the finished wreath hung up last night:
It's not perfect, and I was pretty worried in the middle of it all that is was going to come out a complete disaster. I asked my husband what he thought of it after a few rows, and he paused for a long time before saying, "Yeah, I can see it has potential..." Once I had it on the wall, however, he thought it looked fantastic. The great thing about this wreath is that it really is quite forgiving, and looks super good even with a bunch of imperfections.
I used a mix of this tutorial and this tutorial, but also adjusted for my own needs and supplies. I went with a corkboard wreath and pinned most of my paper rolls into place with sewing pins, and only used a glue gun for the inner layers where pinning didn't work. I liked using pins because I could take them out and readjust cones as needed.
If you're curious, I used a 25 cent paperback book I picked up from my library. I wanted it to at least be a book I enjoyed and had read, but also one I didn't care about ripping up, so I settled for Scarlet by Marissa Meyer. (It helped that I don't own any other books in that series, because I don't know if I could've brought myself to break up a series).
The wall above our bed has been completely bare since we moved in almost two years ago (pathetic, I know), so this wreath provides some much needed pizzazz. Now I just have to figure out what else to put on this wall...
I thought you needed some book art when I saw this in The Nesting Place. And when you purged out your books, I thought this would be a good project for your unwanted books. I'm glad you did it! Although did you feel naughty cutting pages out of a book?
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