Monday, August 29, 2011

Back to School Wreath

Claire started Kindergarten today. In honor of that I made this wreath:

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The idea has been in my head for a while. I looked all over the internet and couldn’t really find a tutorial on how to make one, so I thought I’d show a quick tutorial on how I made it.

First: Sharpen a hundred pencils. Okay, not a hundred, just 75, but it felt like a hundred because I don’t have an electric sharpener. Some of them ended up way too short, and some were a really dark color, so watch that.

Second: Get your cardboard base ready (cardboard because I already had it, and it’s free when you have a huge pile of moving boxes in your garage). Trace a bowl on a piece of cardboard then cut the circle out with a razor. Then draw a circle a few inches bigger around that and cut it out.

I spray painted the cardboard white (because my door is white).

Then I traced the bowl on a piece of paper and folded the paper in half, then in half, then in half again.

Put the paper inside the bowl cut-out and use a ruler to draw where the lines would extend. This helps you evenly divide the space and make sure the pencils stay straight and don’t end up on an angle.

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Third: Glue the pencils on the cardboard. I started by gluing one pencil onto a line, making sure it was set straight on the line. I also left the bowl inside the cut-out to make sure my erasers lined up. I put down as many pencils as would fit in the section.

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Then I glued the last pencil of the section on---try to get it straight according to the line, but remember that it probably won’t lie right on top of the line. See how this one ended before the line?

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I put hot glue on the bottom of the pencil (opposite the brand name) then pressed it in place. After the first and last pencil of the section was glued on, I just worked from left to right in the section. If you space them all evenly and then carefully remove, glue, then replace the pencil, it comes out pretty evenly spaced.

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For the next section all you have to do is glue the last one of the section on, then continue around the wreath.

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It took about an hour to glue them all on (maybe less). And guess what? No burns today! A rare happening in my wreath making. I think it needs a bow, but other than that, I really like it!

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I’m nervous that the pencils are going to write on my door, so I may go over each point with clear nail polish, but I’m still thinking on that. Do you think it needs a bow?

1 comment:

  1. I like the star, I think it works great without a bow! Another thought I had would be some cute toll painted apple or something equally 'school-ish' :-) I LOVED this!

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