Sheet music leaf wreaths – TUTORIAL.

I’ve been in the mood to work with vintage sheet music a lot lately I guess.  I’ve done the banners with it, covered the reindeer with it . . and made these new wreaths with it.

I actually keep boxes of leaf shapes that I have pre-cut ‘on hand’, so when inspiration strikes I can start creating right away.  I like to have something to do in the evenings when I watch TV.

Cutting out the leaf shapes is one of those somethings. I also ‘tea stain’ them ahead of time.  (I use my own recipe for staining; it does NOT contain actual tea or coffee or vanilla.  Those make it too sticky!)

I cut my wreath rings out of triple layer scrap cardboard.  (just glue three layers together with tacky glue)  I also use tacky glue to glue the leaves to the wreath.  This picture shows how I place the leaves; along the inside and outside rim first.

It can be quite labor intensive, gluing on one leaf at a time.  To speed up the process I lay out a couple dozen leaves; then dot them ALL with tacky glue (just a small amount on one end of the leaf shape).  Then place them on the wreath form.

This is what the leaf placement looks like close up when finished.

This is a really BIG one!

On this one I used non tea-stained leaves, which do lay nice and flat; but a little TOO flat once I got it all put together.  (tea staining the leaves causes them to curl up and wrinkle a little bit as they dry; giving them a more natural look)

I didn’t want to try to tea-stain these leaves after they were already in place, bit I thought maybe spritzing them with water might curl up the leaves a tad; giving a more natural feel it it.

It worked like a charm!  Exactly the look I was hoping to achieve.  A few of the leaves did curl up a bit too much, to where the cardboard base showed underneath.  I just put a dot of tacky glue under them and glued them down a bit more.

NOW I just have to figure out how I want to ’embellish’ this one.  It feels a bit too BIG to leave plain.

My first thought for dressing it up was to hang a small banner across it, but that just looked too busy.  I stared at this thing for WEEKS trying to figure out ‘what else it needed’?!?!?

I finally settled upon some ‘bling berries’!

I had found a packet of these amber colored crystals at Dollar Tree, and decided to use them on the big wreath.

I just glued them on with tacky glue in little clusters of three.

I don’t think I’ll make them THIS big anymore!  SO many more options for ‘styling’ smaller ones; like this next one:

 I made this one using my pre-tea stained book pages instead of sheet music.

Added this little laser cut wood ‘love’ to the top left.

And a couple of tea stained felt birds and a little read heart to the lower right side.

Here you can see what I was talking about with the tea stained leaves curling up a bit and looking more natural.

Perfect little wreath for Valentine decorating.