How I Made a Paper Boxwood Wreath
I could not have made this Paper Boxwood Wreath as easily as I did without the assistance of my favorite piece of technology – right after my iPhone – comes my Silhouette electronic cutting machine.
I love boxwood wreaths and do have a few of them hanging around my house that I picked up last January in the clearance area of Lowes. Boxwood wreaths tend to dry out and are expensive.
The idea to make one using card stock popped into my head when I was organizing my decorative paper drawer. I figured it would be affordable and not dry out. Having a Silhouette – made my idea into a reality in a few hours.
You know that I love to design and make things – I usually like to be resourceful and use the supplies I already have on hand, but when I get a vision or idea of something in my mind, it sometimes takes a little technical or electronic assistance to make it become a reality. One of the ways to make an idea like this possible is with my Cameo Silhouette cutting machine. It lets me be the designer; I don’t have to settle on a design that is not quite right for me or my decorating style.
If you are not familiar with how a Silhouette works – the easiest way to look at it is that it is like iTunes. Instead of buying a song for your iPhone , you buy digital designs for the Silhouette. There are thousands of downloadable designs to choose from that the machine will cut. This is a great selling feature, but what I like even more is that you can scan any image you draw or find in a photo or magazine and change it to a cut file. (Here is another way I used my Silhouette machine over the summer.)
This is what I did to create paper boxwood sprigs to make a wreath.
I wanted my wreath to have the color mix of the greenery in the photo above – light and dark green. That is the beauty of designing things on your own – you can get exactly what you want.
How to Make a Paper Boxwood Wreath
supplies needed:
- Silhouette electronic cutting machine
- boxwood design scanned and uploaded to a Silhouette “cut” file
- 11 pieces 12 x 12 cardstock – I used 3 different shades of green
- 18-inch grapevine wreath
- glue that will dry clear
1. Download .pdf file: Boxwood-Twig-Art-for-Silhouette
2. When making and scanning your own images – you first have to make the design into a file that the Silhouette can read. It has to be a cutting file. It is not hard to do this, but I went to YouTube to learn how to do it. Here is the link to the YouTube video that showed me how to make a scanned image into a cut file on a Silhouette. It also shows how to make a cut and print file.
3. Once the file image outline is red in the Silhouette interface – it is ready to be cut. I did not print an image first – I just wanted the outline shape.
4. Hook up your computer to the Silhouette and follow the machine’s prompts to start cutting.
5. Once the cutting is complete – remove the excess paper around the boxwood sprigs and then carefully remove them.
6. Once you have enough boxwood sprigs cut, you can start adding them to the grapevine wreath.
7. I folded the leaves of each sprig to make them look more realistic.
8. I dipped the end of each sprig into glue. (This glue – Glu6 is non-toxic and smells nice. I received this sample to try out. It worked great for this lightweight application.)
9. Stick the ends into the wreath; I tried to evenly space out the 3 colors of sprigs that I had cut.
10. Let dry for a few hours before hanging.
I have not been compensated for this post, but do make a small percentage of sales when you use the code “OwnStyle” when ordering.
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