Way, way back Grace showed you how she made her easy Burlap Bubble Wreath. I too have made a burlap wreath, but mine is quite different than hers. I wanted it to look something like this wreath here, but I must have been a bad student and not followed the directions quite right. That’s okay though, because I actually like how mine turned out!
What you need:
Burlap—mine was from burlapfabric.com
Wreath- I found that the one with compressed hay worked best—leave the plastic wrapping on!
Ruler
Scissor
Pins- at least 100
Step 1:
Cut your burlap. I cut my burlap into 3” x 3” squares. Be ready for a whole lot of burlap shedding—I found it easiest to cut my burlap over a large sheet of old wrapping paper. This way I could just crumple it up and toss it (and all burlap hairs) out. You need tons of squares, so make sure you have something entertaining to watch/listen to!
Step 2:
With wreath, pins, and burlap in hand, you’re ready to start assembling the wreath. You will fold each burlap square into a triangle:
From there, you fold it again into a loosely-shaped triangle:
Step 3:
Begin pinning your triangles into the wreath. I found it easiest to start on the inside of the wreath and work my way to the outside part. The last pin for the outer area is on the bottom edge of the actual wreath, so it’s nicely tucked away.
Overlap your triangles so no wreath shows through and rotate the wreath as you go. You can see that my triangles are very tightly packed.
Step 4:
Continue to pin all the way around the wreath. It took me about 150 pins, 1 per burlap square. If you make your squares bigger to start with and want a looser look, then you will use way less.
Step 5:
Grab some ribbon and hang up the wreath.
I like this wreath because it has a very simple look to it. I’ve hung it up as is, but have also stuck a small grouping similar to these wooden flowers in there as well during the very early fall:
You know that saying, you are the company which you keep?
When it comes to my friends this is sooooo true.
All my friends are gorgeous, smart, and kind, so, therefore, I must be, too. Natch.
Not only are all my friends lovely, but they are also talented in so many ways. The best part is it is not at all competitive (and if you know me, I know this is hard to believe). Instead, I enjoy and celebrate the talents my friends possess because remember I am the company I keep, and you best believe I’m gonna try to emulate their crafts. Yesterday, my sister-in-law Courtney (gorg, smart, and sweet, obvi) sent me a text of her latest craft. I absolutely adore it. I gushed over it, and decided to share it with you all.
Best of all, it is a quick craft, it uses BURLAP (holler!), and it’s perfect for the holiday season.
Isn’t it darling?
While a tutorial probably isn’t necessary for this cute button tree on burlap, I’ll give you a quick run down of materials and directions.
Here’s what you’ll need for the button tree on burlap:
- burlap (burlapfabric.com is my choice supplier of burlap because, yes, one has to have a choice supplier of burlap)
- Buttons
- a glue gun with glue sticks
- a frame— without the glass
Here’s what you’ll do:
- Cut the appropriate size of burlap for your frame.
- Adhere/secure the burlap onto the mdf backing of the frame
- Arrange and then glue the buttons.
So quick, so easy, yet, so cute. You could adapt this craft for other winter shapes, such as a snowflake or even a wreath. Better yet, you may be able to think of additional designs for other seasons.
Thanks for sharing this one, Courtney. Now, excuse me while I whip up one of these button trees on burlap!
The largest project my husband and I have done in our house is the built in entertainment center for our first floor. It took lots of brainstorming and planning to make this from scratch, but we are beyond thrilled with the results.
After it went up, we quickly filled it with books and some baubles that went with our sailing/nautical-lite theme. As the months went by, I found myself tinkering with the items on the shelves as well as the layout… I was just not pleased with how it looked.
Here’s a close up of the shelves— they were too cluttered/a bit too full for my liking. We used a textured wallpaper (similar to grass cloth) for the back of the bookshelves—I wish it photographed more like it actually looks! Forgive the TV wires… we haven’t put them through the cabinets yet!
After de-cluttering and shifting some things around, I found a layout that I could live with.
Now that I liked how the shelves were more open, I wanted to make the whole thing blend together. I was not a fan of the mishmash of cover colors and wanted to do a subtle theme of blues, greens, and creams—this would match much better with the rest of the décor in the room.
My husband thought I was insane when I told him I was going to recover the books. When I removed the paper cover, some of the hardcover books were already blue or cream, so that worked to my advantage. It was mostly the paperbacks that I had to deal with.
As I wanted to print on the covers, I referenced/modified this in depth tutorial from the blog The Precious Little Things in Life.
Here’s how I covered my books.
What you need:
Books
Paper (I found some large paper at Hobby Lobby and used brown shipping paper that I
already had leftover from Christmas)
Scissors
Tape
Measuring Tape
Ruler
Printer
Microsoft Word
Step 1:
First I had to determine what color I wanted each book to be. I did a rough sketch of our books in the layout that I liked and then assigned each book that was getting covered a color.
Step 2:
Line up your books and group those of the same height together. Under each category of height, I listed the individual measurements for those titles.
Step 3:
Measure your books. You need two measurements, the height of the book, which you already measured, and the book’s circumference. Find the book’s circumference by placing the lip of your measuring tape on the backside of the book, wrap around the spine, and across the front cover.
When you have all of these written down, you are ready to start covering your books. It would have been lovely if I had books that were the same height and circumferences, but alas every book was slightly different. This would have saved me some time cutting out the paper (I could have cut multiple sheets at once). Maybe you will be luckier than I was.
Step 4:
These directions might vary ever so slightly for you, as I was using Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac. In Microsoft Word, navigate to Page Set Up.
In the Page Set Up box, find Paper Size, and go to Manage Custom Sizes—this is where you will type in your measurements to ensure a perfect fit.
In the Manage Custom Sizes box, the Width box is where you will type the height of the book. The Height box is where you will then type the circumference measurement. You can see this in the picture below, as well as the fact that I chose to make my top, bottom, left, and right margins 0.
Your page will now look tall and narrow—this is what you want in order to print the title.
Step 5:
Now that you know your page dimensions, you’re ready to cut your paper. Cut your paper to the same measurements that you typed in the Width and Height boxes. Once your paper is cut, put it in your printer (I had to use the manual feed tray in the back of mine).
Step 6:
You’re almost ready to type your book title onto the spine of your book cover.
You can vary the fonts and sizes to your liking—I chose to keep my font the same for every book. The only thing I changed was the font size. Some of my book spines were 2 inches while others were ¼ inch, therefore I used size 30 font for the bigger titles and size 14 font for the smaller. I printed out one regular old page of a few titles with font sizes of 14, 18, 22, 26, 30. I then held up this sheet to the books when I was ready to type the titles in order to eyeball which size was the best fit.
Step 7:
Remember where you typed the circumference of the book into the Height box? In my earlier photo it was 16.25. In order to type your title perfectly centered on your book cover, you need to take your circumference measurement and divide it by 2.
For example, 16.25/2 = 8.125. Hit enter until you bring your cursor down to roughly 8.125. So long as you are in the ballpark of that number, you will be fine.
Center your cursor, and type in your title and author.
Step 8:
With your paper in the printer and title typed up, go ahead and print.
Lay your book on the printed paper and pull until the title is centered on the spine.
Make a crease where the front/back covers end so you know where to fold your paper. Tape the cover in place.
Step 9: (Optional)
I decided to lightly pinch/crease the spine so there was more definition around the edges.
So there you have it– freshly covered books to go with the color scheme of your choice. Here are a few shots of the books on the shelves. (Pardon the wonky lighting in a few of the photos).
Although it took a while, I enjoyed doing this project. It was kind of like a grown up version of covering your textbooks back in middle school!
