Recycling paper for holiday: Awesome Paper Cone Wreath Tutorial

Today I am going to give you a very detailed, step by step tutorial on how to make this wreath.  In fact sorry if it almost feels like paper cone wreath making for dumbies, but I have had a lot of questions about this wreath so I am just trying to cover all my bases.

Recycling paper for holiday: Awesome Paper Cone Wreath Tutorial
Let's get started...

First gather your supplies.

You will want
-5 or 6 double sided scrapbook papers.  I picked 5 different papers from this wreath, but you could do 5 of the same if you wanted.
-Printed pages.  For this wreath I used a book I bought at the dollar store.  But just about any printed pages would work... copy pages... old text book...  whatever.  Just think about the color of the pages before you pick them.  Some pages are whiter than others.
- A 3 inch scalloped paper punch.
-A hot glue gun and about 10 to 15 sticks of glue.
-  A wreath base.




Now lets talk about the wreath base.  Usually I like to get mine from the dollar store, but for some reason they have been out of the 12 inch size wreath lately.  I bought a 9 in base (pictured above) but it just seemed to small and I didn't want to go out to the craft store with all the kids again, so I just made my own.

To make your own you are going to want a newspaper and tape.  Start by laying out the newspaper layers over lapping each other.

Then roll them up making a long tube of newspaper.  Then turn that tube into a lame looking circle and tape the ends together.

Then start wrapping it with more newspaper so it gets a better shape and firmness.

I think most all projects have a "looks really crappy" stage.  This is one of those stages.  Just keep going.  It will all work out in the end.

Alrighty, so now you have a newspaper circle.  Make sure you add enough tape to add strength.

Now lets move on to the paper part of this.  Use the punch to cut out your circles.

You should be able to cut 2 pieces of the thick scrapbook paper at a time.  And don't forget to get those middle punches too.

Don't throw away your paper scraps, you may want them later.

For the book pages you should be able to punch them out 4 pages at a time.  First go through your book and tear pages in sets of 4.  You are going to want a lot of pages.

If for some reason you don't punch out all your circles perfectly, don't worry about it.  You can just roll that spot to the bottom when you make you cones.

Now using your glue gun start making cones.

You will want to make cones of all different widths and try to make sure the cone it closed at the bottom.  They look better on the wreath if they are closed at the bottom.

To make a few that have book page on one side and colored paper on the other, just hot glue them together and the roll them into a cone. 

It is also cute to make a few with off center stacked circles.

I like to make quite a few cones before I start gluing them on.

Start out by working your way around the top of the wreath.

This is another one of the crappy looking stages.

Yes, I like to watch a movie on my laptop while doing this.

Once you get all the way around the top, start filling in the side.  I like to do the middle first.

When I am gluing the cones on top I like to put glue at the base of the cone, but once I am doing the sides I like to put glue on the sides and sometimes on the base.

Once the middle is looking GOOD. I work my way around the outside.

Once you think you got it looking pretty good, look for more spots where you can stick in more cones.  Holding it up to the light can help.

Then make some very skinny cones.

Kinda hold the circle in half-ish and roll it kinda tight so you have a skinny cone.

These cones are great to stick  the middle of other cones.

Then I hot glued circles to the ugly wreath base to make it more pretty.

Then I made the little welcome sign.   I cut them out of s leftover piece of scrapbook paper.

And hot glue them to a string and the glue it to your wreath.

The possibilities are endless.