The 1st Annual Black Friday Craftapalooza

I'm not sure I meant for it to happen, but I think I may have started a new tradition! After seeing so many fun projects on the last couple of DIY Days, I told my mom we should try a few projects. We made a couple of fancy snowflakes and decided to make more later. I had also finally decided that I wanted to take a stab at Lindsay's book wreath- check it out at Living with Lindsay.

Here's my take on it...

I'll be totally honest with you, when I first saw the wreath on Lindsay's blog, I wasn't sure if I loved it or hated it. Don't judge me! After my initial, huh??? reaction, the wreath kind of grew on me. Apparently it kind of grew on a LOT of bloggers out there too!! (We tried something a bit different though... so read on).

Anywho, I showed my mom and we decided we were going to make one for each of us and then we decided that my younger sister would join in on the fun. Ah, little did she know what we had in store for her. We're not big Black Friday shoppers, but we did go out later in the day for a few things and gathered supplies at the dollar store. My sister just kept saying, "We're making a wreath out of books???"

Since there were not very many paperback books (that were in decent shape) at our dollar store, we went with hardcover books. I chose mine because I really liked the font (which really doesn't matter much later) and my mom grabbed the other books, sort of based on font style, but also because they had plenty of pages. Oddly enough, I realized later that my book was a fictional story about Freud and Jung! How fitting! Amber's book was about criminal investigation and forensics, which was also somewhat fitting. Mom's book didn't fit quite so well, but it did have a Polish character. :-)

I will admit my sister and I were a little discouraged at first, since it seemed like the first few rows/layers weren't adding up fast enough, but after a while, the wreath took shape. I really liked using a hardcover- the pages were wider, which was good, though we did end up adjusting the length of the pages. We just simply tore a little off the bottom. I usually rolled/folded my torn edges in, but on some it really added some texture and fullness. I also really tried to fill mine pretty tightly when going through for the first time, which meant I didn't have to fill in a lot of holes at the end. My sister actually ended up using nearly 2 books for her wreath!!

Here's my finished product! I realized this pic doesn't do it justice...

Ahhh, this is a little better. You can get a better idea of just how big and pouffy these things are! Initially, I thought the wreath forms at the store were smaller than the one Lindsay used... gosh am I GLAD we didn't get a bigger one!

Mom ended up helping the 2 of us make our wreaths, then she decided that she would use her supplies to make my other sister a wreath, since she couldn't be a part of our Craft-a-Thon... check out our handiwork on my sister's blog here . I think they turned out really well (in spite of what my brother and dad think!)!!

What do you think?

I'm linking up with DIY Day!