Penni & Lyssa's Last Minute Valentine Adventures: Quilted Paper Wreath

Welcome back to Day Two of the 2018 Penni & Lyssa's Last-Minute Valentine Adventure blog series! If you missed Day One, click here. Otherwise, buckle your seat belts, because we're sharing a gorgeous paper wreath idea that you'll want to make for every season, not just Happy Hearts Day!

Wowie Kazaam, right? This project looks complicated but I PROMISE will only take you 45 minutes start to finish. And once you've made one, you'll be looking for more paper to make another one! I can see these in St. Patrick's Day greens, springy Easter pastels, and bold Fourth of July stars & stripes.

Here's what you'll need to grab:

• approx 4 sheets of 12x12 patterned paper, double-sided, 2 each of 2 different patterns
• a regular office stapler
• Stampin' Dimensionals
• Bone Folder (trust me, your finger is going to get tired)
• about a yard of ribbon

Cut the 12x12 sheets into 4x4 squares. You will not use every piece of all four sheets, but you need an equal number of squares of each pattern. Each wreath takes 24 squares. Let's get started!

Fold the first eight squares into the shape shown above on the bottom left. I call it the "ice cream fold" because the bottom part looks like a cone. These do not need to be perfect, but they should be reasonably close. Make four of each pattern of paper.

Take one "ice cream fold" of each of your two patterns and staple them together along the fold line inside the two adjoining flaps. Continue around with all eight folded pieces (below), until at last you connect the circle.

Make sure you alternate the two patterns or it will look less like a quilt! And NOTE: only staple them once, at the top, not at the pointed end. The wreath will feel a little fragile at this point, but by the time we're done it will be very solid.

Next we're going to fold one flap of the "cone" back on itself to form a little mini pleat. This adds a lot of texture to the wreath. Only fold back one flap (the same one) on every cone.

When you have folded the same flap on every cone, it should look like mine below:

Starting to look really pretty, eh? Now we'll open up the middle of the wreath by folding those inner points back on themselves about an inch. as you can see, not perfect folding here either--AND THAT'S OK : ) Crafting should not be stressful!

Secure the points down with a dimensional pop dot. You can also use hot glue, but I'm not allowed to anymore because of the Great Hot Glue Incident of '12.

If you've done it right up to this point, here's what the front (above) and back (below) will look like. You can see I was very inspired by quilting when I made this wreath! : ) Lots of quilting techniques and patterns work for papercrafts.

You can quit at this point if you only need a little wreath, or you can make it larger. Go BIG or go HOME, right?!

On to the next layer. Make eight more "ice cream cones", again four of each of your two patterns.

Insert them into the slot created by the folded-back flap of the first ring of eight. They won't slide all the way down inside, because we folded our inner points in.

Once you get all eight tucked in where they need to go, stick a dimensional on each one to connect them all to the stapled inner ring of eight. You'll have something that looks a little like a giant snowflake with eight "arms" at this point (sorry no pic!)

Almost done! Grab your eight remaining squares--do NOT fold them. They are going to lay flat on the back side, spanning the eight pointy "arms" we just added to our original ring. Place them on point, so that one corner is centered between the two points of the "arms."

Adhere those "arms" to the flat squares with two dimensional pop dots. Now each ring of eight is connected to the others and the original stapled ring.

That may sound a little complicated, but when you get there you'll see it just makes sense. Once you have all 8 squares adhered with the points centered between the points, it will look like this from the back:

You can zip around and add some more dimensionals or hot glue to encourage it to be sturdy, if you're planning to save and re-use the decoration next year. That's all there is to it! Isn't it pretty? Give yourself a hand--you should be proud of that!

And.... if you want to be even more FANCY (who doesn't??) then make another one of the original rings of eight. Layer it onto your finished wreath in a gorgeous double version that's got even more texture and depth! A double wreath takes 36 squares total.

Pretty spiffy, hey? If you're gonna give this wreath a go, leave us a comment and tell us so! And don't forget to pop back in on Wednesday for Day Three of our Valentine crafty blog series. See you tomorrow!

Comments

[Deepa M.]

What a gorgeous project! I can't wait to try this myself and I can only hope mine turns out just as pretty.

[Lynn]

Love love this series...and thank you for this free tutorial for this wreath!
I hope to sit down and make four, as suggested, one for each season......

[Susan Timchack]

Great idea using our beautiful DSP...thank you for sharing!