My Personal Pinterest Project : Paper Flower Wreath

(BTW: 4 point alliteration) Pinterest is getting worse than Facebook in the grand scheme of my time-wasting. Especially when DIY crafts are involved. It's amazing how far reaching multi-media is: not only does it waste my time when I'm online, but then it extends to when I'm offline, trying out all the things I saw online. Nice. Luckily for me, though, I have plenty of time to waste this summer while in Texas. So, I took it upon myself to finally try out some of the crafts that I'd pinned (you can see them and some of my other Pinterest boards here). First on the craft to-do list: a paper rose wreath. I hit the jackpot when I got home and found some old encyclopedias and books of the year that my mom was wanting to get rid of. Why get rid of them when you craft with them?!? So that's exactly what I did. I made little paper flowers out of the book pages, and I have to admit, they turned out pretty cute. They look a little more like ranunculus than roses, which I like better anyways. They took FOREVER though. The tutorial warned that the flower-making took a while, but I figured it couldn't be that bad. It was. It was definitely that bad. I got so sick of rolling paper into little flowers. In the end, it took me about two sittings to make enough flowers to cover the wreath (for my own sanity, I didn't pay attention to how long each of the sittings was, but they were most likely over three hours each. Granted, I was also really distracted by movies and TiVo).

My first little flower. The magic of it quickly dissipated after about the first hour. 

Thanks to some coupon circulars from Michael's, I got an 18 inch wreath form for about $3, which ended up being the only thing I had to pay for (score for poor college student budget!). I was so excited to finally start glueing the flowers on the wreath. First, I modge-podged some paper strips onto the wreath form, that way the hot glue wouldn't melt the styrofoam and any gaps would be camouflaged. The tutorial I followed had a really uniform look with all of the flowers basically the same size, but I wanted a more organic look. I'm not really sure if I decided this before or after I realized how hard it was for me to make the flowers all the same size, but no matter. I ended up having a nice range of flower sizes, with a few larger ones that could act as the focal point, then have a gradient down to smaller flowers. In the end, I absolutely love how it turned out. I can't wait to see it on our apartment door! What do you think?

Back with a blogging vengeance.

I guess everyone has those times when certain things (ahem, blogging) just don't get done. And I'm okay with that. But now I'm back-- meaning it's summer and I'm home and I have nothing else to do, so I'll catch up on blogging! Well, "catching up" might very well be impossible, but I'll include some highlights:

My 20th Birthday! I had a wonderful party at my apartment in April, right in time to kick off finals week. I had so may dear friends come, and some new ones too! It was so fun to host a party and get food and decorations and pinatas and cake. Costco definitely came in handy. It was a really fun night, and Whitney and I decided we really like throwing parties. And being 20 isn't too bad either.

  

Spring Term. If you thought school was over after finals in April, think again! I decided to also take classes during Spring term, which was from the end of April to middle of June. I took a Spanish class and a Linguistics class, which both solidified my decision to become a Linguistics major and Spanish minor... surprise! I haven't officially made the switch yet, but I'm really excited about it.

Nolan Paul Dickson! My new nephew was born on June 6th at 6:06 pm... yes, it's 6:06 on 6/6/12. That is too perfect, right? He is so cute and such a little bundle of joy! I am such a haappy auntie to have both a niece and a nephew now, and both too cute to boot. He is such a sweet baby.

4th of July. Happy Independence Day! Today was really fun, mostly because I got to see THE BEACH BOYS LIVE IN CONCERT!! I went to Stadium of Fire with Cortney and Paul, and it was awesome. First, Scotty McCreery sang, then the Beach Boys took the stage. I can't believe that I got to see such an iconic band play live! Yes, I realize that they are pretty old school and getting up there in years, but they still sounded exactly the same, meaning they sounded awesome. I loved singing along to every song in celebration of our blessed and wonderful country. God bless America!


Summertime living. Basically summer has been pretty relaxed. I was working for a bit until July and taking classes, but once those were over, I wasn't really doing anything. I honestly don't think I will ever have another summer like this in my entire life, just not doing anything. So, I decided to go home to Texas for a bit. It was only going to be about a week's long trip, but through a few changes and rearrangings, it's turned into about a month-long trip! And I couldn't be more happy about being home in the Lone Star State :)

If you want to try to catch up on my other summer happenings, follow me on Instagram!