Yes, I Am Completely Insane...

I'm back with another Christmas project that I made this year. :)

Yesterday, I shared my project that took about 40 rolled roses to make. Today, I'm sharing something that took a whole heck of a lot more (oh, let's just say that it was close to 500 -- no exaggeration). Needless to say, I made yesterday's project after I made this one. Because there is no way that I would have seen how long yesterday's took and then still think it was wise to attempt to make this one. ;)

I unfortunately don't have fabulous pictures of this gift. A lot of times I end up madly crafting until the very last minute and don't get a chance to snap photos before I gift something. This time that's not what happened. I just plain forgot. So it was up to my mom to snap some photos for me. And my mom's camera is temperamental. :(

But (after all that disclaimer information) here it is. ;)





Yes, I am, in fact, completely insane.

In my defense, I got the idea for this gift here, where incidentally, you can get a complete tutorial on how to make the wreath, even if you don't own MFT's rolled flower die (The rest of her site is amazing, too, by the way -- check it out!). I naively assumed that if she could make one without even using the die, that it couldn't be that hard or time consuming for me to make one. HA!

In the end, I would probably never make one of these again. ;) Or at least I would make a MUCH smaller version (I think the wreath form I used was a 14 inch?). Or maybe pack the roses less tightly? Sometimes (most times), the fact that I'm completely neurotic really trips me up. This baby took me forever and a day to finish.

Yesterday, I said that I used a Cricut to cut out the dies. That was a mistake. I actually used my Cuttlebug. I always get die cutting machines mixed up. The Cuttlebug is the only one I own, and the whole time I was making this wreath, all I could think about was how I truly, definitely needed to invest in an electronic one. Hand cranking 500 rolled roses is not as fun and carefree as one might think. ;) At least it's kind of mindless though. I just sat in front of the TV and cranked, rolled and glued...and cranked, rolled and glued...and cranked, rolled and glued...

Before gluing the roses to the wreath, I wrapped the styrofoam wreath form with some burlap garland (basically a really long strip of burlap) that I found in the floral section of Michael's. This gave the back of the wreath a more-finished appearance and made the roses easier to glue on, without fear of melting the styrofoam.





After I was done gluing all the roses on, I lightly inked the edges of some of the roses by brushing an ink pad over the wreath. This was an afterthought, and if I had it to do again, I would have inked some of the roses individually before gluing them down, instead. I think it would have looked a little more natural.



Hope everyone's having a good weekend. We're having some friends over for the Oscar's tonight, so I've got to run and make sure my house isn't a complete disaster when they get here. ;)

Enjoy your day.