DIY.

I saw some book page wreaths in one of the recent Pottery Barn catalogues and thought, "humph, I am not paying that much for that, " so I put glue gun to paper and figured out how to do it myself. I took pics a long the way to share. Enjoy! I spent $0.00... and I while I know that there is "no such thing as a free lunch," (thank you BU macro economics) I think I can at least chalk it up to a pretty thrifty Christmas decoration.

Supplies:
- Cardboard Scraps (I cut up a corrugated cardboard box from Sam's)
- Paperback novel (Grabbed an unneeded one off the bookshelf)
- Brown craft paint
- Glue gun & glue sticks
- Small strip of ribbon

1. Get together all your supplies... find a book with "yellowed pages" to create a vintage feel.
2. Using a stiff paintbrush, I applied the brown paint to the edges of the book. I simply squirted some paint onto brush and painted it on the edges of the book. Set aside to dry.

3. Instead of buying a wreath, I just cut up some scraps of cardboard and glued them together in a square wreath shape. (It worked just as well.)

4. After the pages were dry, I cut a page out of the book and you can either fan or roll it. Remember to roll the paper and not actually fold or crease it. Only fold the bottom of each page up after fanning, created a tab to glue on. Make sure that the painted edges are facing up and you only glue on the tab.

5) To fill in the wreath, you'll simply roll a page, apply glue to the ends, and just stick it to the cardboard. After covering the whole wreath, you will want to add some filler pages for the sparse areas. The filler pages don't necessarily need to touch the cardboard; they can stick to the pages already glued to the wreath, if need be. Use the filler pages to fill in holes & add some height and visual interest to your wreath. I also cut the pages at different lengths to create dimension, as well.

8. After I was finished filling in, I flipped my wreath over and glued some red ribbon on the back to serve as a hanger.

9. Hang in desired location... here she is, my free, thrifty, recessionista wreath...

{and this was the look I received from Senga as I destructively tore the novel apart... she's a bit confused that I can do this and she can't.}

Enjoy!