DIY Book Page Wreath

See if you have the same problems I have:

Love books? Check.

Wish your house had cuter décor? Check.

You’re totally broke because you spend all your money on books? Double check.

Then you’ll love this DIY! I had most of the materials on hand (and you probably do too!) so the total cost to me was $2 and some time.

Materials:

Book (at least 125 pages)

Stapler and staples

Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks

12x12 inch square of cardboard (mine was from a box)

Scissors

1 chenille stem (a “pipe cleaner” if you’re old school)

First, find a book that needs re-purposing. I scoured my local Goodwill for this. I was hoping to find a classic like Pride and Prejudice but it was slim pickins so I settled on a thesaurus that had seen better days. Total cost was $2 (and it had enough pages for me to make TWO wreaths!). My book pages were about 8x5 inches and my finished wreath measured about 22 inches across.

Start off by cutting out a “wreath” base on your cardboard. I used a dinner plate for the larger circle (mine was about 11.25 inches in diameter) and a bowl for the smaller circle (about 6 inches in diameter). I just cut it with scissors. It will be completely covered so it can be ugly.

Then you need to rip all the pages out of your book (I know, it seems like sacrilege!). Then start rolling and stapling each page. I rolled in the upper left corner and then rolled the right side across it and folded the edge behind it. Adjust yours to make a conical shape that you like.

Staple it together an inch or so from the bottom.

Repeat about 80-90 times. I suggest binge-watching Doctor Who while you do this (preferably an Amy/Rory season). Then you’ll need some that are rolled a little bit tighter for the innermost circle (I’d make about 20). You can see in the picture that the tighter ones are on the bottom and the regular ones on top.

Okay, when you start gluing, you want to start on the BACK. So flip your cardboard over. I glued four (of the bigger size) pages facing north, south, east, and west to keep my wreath from getting all cattywampus (there’s a good southern word for you!). You can see I left about half an inch of space from the inner circle edge.

Fill in with rolled pages. I used 24 pages on this biggest circle. While you are on the back, fold a pipe cleaner in half, twist it together, and glue it in place.

Wait until the glue is totally dry before you flip it over (learn from my mistakes, folks). This is what the front will now look like.

For the next layer of pages, I glued the pages so they came into the opening just slightly. I used 20 rolled pages for my second layer.

Once your second layer of pages is done, flip the wreath over and trim the edges around the inner circle.

For the third layer, I overlapped into the center about 1-1.5 inches. I used 16 rolled pages for my third layer.

Flip over and trim around the circle again.

For the fourth and innermost layer, I used my tightly rolled pages. I made a crease 3(ish) inches from the bottom.

Then I slid the bottom under the wreath and pressed the crease against the cardboard. I squirted hot glue along the inside of the crease and a little glob on one of the previous row’s page (this helps the tightly rolled page stay “up”). This step took the longest for me.