Back to School Wreath

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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!

        

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?