Using up a pile of SC paper bags (not for the time crunched!)

Studio Calico kits arrive monthly in lovely brown bags. I always save them for awhile, feeling guilty about throwing them away.  And then they end up in the recycle bin, ideas for their re-use never coming to fruition. But this month, I actually used almost two months worth of bags! 

There are tons of wreath projects around the web...and I'm still wanting to make a book page wreath, but

I really love how this one turned out.

Supplies needed:

12 SC bags

1 hard styrofoam wreath form

scalloped circle punch

glue gun

pencil

ribbon, tulle, a strip of muslin, etc. for the bow hanger

Straighten out your paper bags, but leave them whole (so the punch is going through both layers.) Punch....and punch...and punch. I used 12 bags, approximately 108 circles per bag.

I used Stampin Up's scalloped circle punch. I did have to sharpen it with tin foil about half-way through. The punch definitely got a workout!

Remember this technique from way back in preschool? My older kids attended an excellent little preschool in Philadelphia at the Smith Family Playhouse. Every spring, Miss Christine would have the kids take out their pencils and little squares of yellow tissue paper to make freesia art (freesia was always the first plant to flower in Philly.)

Take each individual scalloped circle and curl it around the eraser end of a pencil.

Use your hot glue gun to put a dot of glue on the end of your blossom and attach to the wreath form. Do this 1295 more times ;)

I attached mine very, very close together. You could probably do it a little further apart and have a less dense look.

I left the back of my wreath without blossoms. In retrospect, I wish I had wrapped the wreath form in muslin or something prior to attaching the blossoms. It lies very nicely and flat against the wall, but when I put it up in front of the mirror, you can see just a bit of the green from certain angles.

The finished project!