Cardboard Wreath DIY Tutorial

And we're back!

I wanted to give everyone some time to soak up the last post before I began talking about the next project to be posted.

This week I will be giving a quick tutorial on how to make a wreath from cardboard tubes.

Cardboard tubes?

     I was originally inspired to do this while surfing Pinterest. I'm going to note now that I am an absolute Pinterest whore, and much of my inspirations come from there. I noticed that their are countless uses for the cardboard tubes that we acquire from toilet paper, paper towels, shipping, etc. I liked the idea of making a wreath since wreaths hold a special place in my crafty heart and it seemed like a good starter project to get into the cardboard tube world.

     Since I have a lot of butts available to me, it only took me about a week to get the amount of tubes I thought I would need.  Paper towel tubes were cut down to the same length as toilet paper tubes just to keep some uniformity. I also even altered a K-cup box to house my tubes, they fit perfectly and when full will have the correct amount of tubes to make a wreath the size I did. Not to mention that it is just neater than having tubes all over your house or in plastic bags everywhere.

I'm sure the K-cup boxes have an endless amount of organizing capabilities also.
 But this is a conversation for another time, let's move on and begin the tutorial.

Tutorial Time!

Okay, so this tutorial is not meant to be done exactly as I have shown it. Their are endless possibilities for the layout of said wreath and a bunch of different ways it can be decorated. I am just offering up my advice on how I did it, what issues I had along the way, and the end result.

Step One

The first thing you are going to want to do after you have the amount of tubes you will need (about 15-20) is to cut them. All of the paper towel tubes I had were cut down into the length of a regular toilet paper tube. After this step was done I cut the tubes themselves into three to four pieces each tube. All you do is flatten out the tube and cut right through. I varied my cuts, meaning not every piece cut was the same width. I would get three pieces from a tube and sometimes four or five. I wanted to vary the height as to add a nice 3-D effect once it was all assembled.

Step Two

I was under the assumption it was a good idea to make a template for the wreath, since I planned on spray painting the tubes two different colors. Making the template this early was a bad idea, you'll find out why later on, if you haven't realized it already. So, I laid out a big piece of white paper, and laid my cut out tubes into the wreath shape that I wanted.

 Using one of my alcohol dyes, I sprayed all over the paper and tubes. This was the result after the tubes were taken off the paper.

As you can see, it did do a good job at making on outline, I also outlined the entire thing with a pen to make it more noticeable.

Step Three

Coloring the tubes can be done a number of ways. I have seen people paint them with acrylics, spray paint them once they are all glued together, and I imagine that even using washi tape and gluing paper to them could also work, depending on the effect you wanted. I wanted two separate colors, even though attaching the whole wreath together and spraying it all one color was a better choice for a beginner like me, I needed those two colors. 

One of the problems I noticed while trying to spray paint these tubes is that they are very light. The air that comes out of a spray can blows these babies away. This can be solved by attaching them to a sticky surface(double sided tape anyone?) or simply using a light hold glue to keep them in place.  I unfortunately did not think this far ahead and wanted it done ASAP, so I carefully picked up every single tube cutting  with a pinching-type tool(pliers, tweezers, whatever you can find) and spray painted them individually. Needless to say it was very time consuming and messy on my end. I painted them gold and lavender.

Here are the freshly painted tubes drying.

I let them dry overnight before attaching them together.

Step Four

Now that the tubes are dry, we can begin to attach them to each other to form the wreath. I whipped out the template, plugged my glue gun in and began. First issue with making the template was that I was not putting the EXACT same pieces in the EXACT spots for them, so my template became more of a guideline after the pieces stopped fitting and matching together.

As you can see in the end the template had no real use. My advice if you're doing this for the first time would be to just glue the wreath together and spray paint while it's one whole piece. If it was done that way the template would be useful because you wouldn't be removing the tubes and trying to puzzle them back together like I had to. I think the wreath would look cool without paint, especially if your cardboard tubes are different shades of brown and white.

Step Five

It is now time to decorate the wreath. You can choose to leave it bare, but I wanted to go a bit fancy with mine and incorporate a previous DIY tutorial on here, the birdhouse. I made a birdhouse just for this wreath. I also went to my local Michaels craft store and picked up some fake flowers.

I glued all of the flowers and birdhouse on with a hot glue gun. This was about half-way through the decorating process. I also managed to find some little decorative birds at The Dollar Tree. This is the end result.

 I feel like the widdle birdie makes it.

What's next?

I have quite a few projects underway right now made with materials that are quite inexpensive to acquire. Some of these projects include paper plates and plastic Easter eggs. I am also going to post a tutorial of how to make home made body wash using bar soap(the correct way!) See you soon!

Crafts and kisses,