Craft!: May Day Flower Wreath

My favorite holiday is coming soon! May Day! I'm taking about the traditionally Celtic holiday, not the International Workers Day. I love this holiday for many reasons. Foremost of which coincides with my love of Elizabeth I, historically. Even she was known to enjoy going "Maying" (dropping bouquets of flowers on people's doorsteps) as a child. And of course, the absolute lack of Hallmark around this holiday continues to fuel my love of this holiday.

So in honor or May Day I decided to make a beautiful flower wreath out of paper!

 I got the idea from a blog I saw on CraftGawker (link to the side ---> )
You can find the original here.
As usual, I made some adjustments.

On that website you can find a link to another site with flower templates. I made the mistake of printing them out on normal printer paper. I suggest printing them onto cardstock for easier cutting. I used my first traceout as templates for the rest.

I bought a bright colors and a pastel colors textured cardstock pads at Walmart.

First, choose your colors! Then, cut out various sizes and varieties of flowers.

While cutting the flowers I found my hands were shaking ~ Too much coffee!! I had to take a break. =)

The original directions called for buying a pre-cut cardboard or foam wreath shape.


I had extra cardboard laying around, so I decided to be thrifty.


I found my largest mixing bowl and traced it out onto the cardboard. Then I cut out the circle. I suggest large scissors for cutting cardboard, even though I prefer children's scissors for normal cutting.

Voila!

Then I laid all the flowers out so I could look at color combinations.


After that, just start piecing them together!

You can fold the flowers along their petals to add dimensions, and layer them in many different ways.

Use a flower punch to make smaller flowers.
Use brads to keep them all together.

 I had a lot of fun making flowers.  

Make a lot of varieties, and then lay them out. Once they're all laid out exactly how you want them, then the hard part comes.

The original directions said to glue them together with a hot glue gun. Hot glue is not my favorite.

I used Zots! If you've never heard of them, you are soooooooo missing out!!
You can buy them at Target, Michael's, etc. They're usually next to the glue. Scrapbooking stores always have them, but they charge more and have different brands.

Zots are little glue dots (like the kind that stick your gift card to the cardboard). They come in different strengths, too. I have a strong strength, because I usually use them to adhere random items to my scrapbook pages (candles, felt, and knitted starfish are just some examples... They work really well on chipboard).

I used Zots to attach all the flowers to each other, first. Then I flipped the wreath over and used Zots to attach it to the cardboard.

 

Add some ribbon and hang on your wall!