Paper Towel Spring Wreath

This weekend I had the huge thrill of seeing my linen and ric rack napkins featured on one of my favorite blogs, Tatertots and Jello. I know you've heard me talk about Jen's amazing projects before - so in appreciation of her and her awesome tutorials, I decided to make something with burlap; her signature material.

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I'm April Stash Busting with Dollar Store Crafts (who also linked to my napkins, thank you so much!!!) and many other cool bloggers.  It's been a neat, maddening, enlightening experience as I am using what I have and making do with what I don't have. One of my personal goals was to try out some of the supplies I've bought but never used. Like these:

As soon as I saw the gorgeous mess they made of my two-ply Costco paper towels, I was inspired. Brayden and I spent a happy afternoon spraying paper towels in fun colors and patterns. Re-inker, water and a little perfect pearls are more fun than Glimmer Mist, but both worked wonderfully. Next time we'll try plain old food coloring also.

I knew I wanted to do something with burlap so I cut mine in wide strips and wrapped it around a Dollar Store wreath frame that's been sitting around for ages. Whenever I came to an end of a piece I hot glued it down, grabbed a new piece and kept wrapping. Sorry for the lack of pictures - if you need one to visualize it, let me know and I'll snap a few of the back of my wreath.

Next came flowers. I wasn't concerned with them matching too much and wanted them to all be different. Here's a few ideas:

Did you see that glitter? Take that, all boy household :-)

I also found a use for an onion bag on the counter. That black mesh was too cool to toss.

It's probably obvious how most of these are made, but just in case it's not, here are a few step outs to get you started:

1. Cut circles by folding paper towels until at least three thick. Circles don't need to be perfect. Staple in center.

2. Put a dab of hot glue in the center and scrunch it a bit.

3. Separate the layers if using two-ply paper towel. This fluffs up the flower. Do one layer at a time. (This pic shows the layers pre-scrunch, I was designing on the fly)

Finished Flower:

Flower 2:

1. Cut circles again, but this time squish them into bow tie shapes. 

2. Staple them together criss-crossed in a flower shape.

3. Fluff and add a center.

4. Add a contrasting flat bottom layer if desired.

Thanks for stopping by, this was a really fun thing to do with the paper towel I was originally using to mop up the mess from a different project. 

Here's a few places I'm linked up with: