Welcoming Linda from Two Succulent Sisters!

Hi, everyone, I'm Linda from Two Succulent Sisters. I am so excited and happy to be part of  "Blog. Swap. Share." This project is the brainchild of Julie of White Lights on Wednesday and Carrie at My Favorite Finds. It is about a group of blogs who are having fun swapping posts and making new friends altogether. I have the pleasure of guest posting for Jessica on her blog Crafty Nonsense Noted (isn't that a cute name for a blog? Love it.) Thank you, Jess, for having us!!  My sister, Carol, and I do lots of craft tutorials on our blog and I've joined the square wreath revolution! Making the square wreath is a snap, and decorating them is super fun. I like to take old frames and then wrap fabric around them using hot glue to hold the fabric on. Now you have a basis to place any kinds of decorations on. Here is a little paper and fabric flower I made to put on the square wreath.

My mother was here one night when I was in a crafting frenzy making square wreaths. I wanted to finish them up in a hurry (my sister and I like to do crafts that look like they took a long time to make but actually were made up quickly) and I didn't know what kind of decorations to put on this one particular square wreath I was making for my granddaughter. Then I had a flash of inspiration, got out some scrapbook paper, and cut a sort of flower shape - freehand of course, because making a pattern would take too long. Scrapbook paper:

Cut out a flower shape. I cut out a 3 inch square and then freehand cut some scallops around and around until you get all the way around. Sometimes my ends don't quite meet right but most times I can salvage the flower. So here is the basis of the flower. You see? It's not perfect but it's good anyway. Sometimes perfect is sterile and not interesting at all. This is interesting.

When I put layers of paper flowers on top of one another, it's too flat so I like to put something in between the layers. In this case, I added a button. You can put a little piece of foam, too. You can buy them in the scrapbooking area of a crafts store.

Now I add the next layer. I cut out a square about 2 inches by 2 inches and then just round it out to an almost circle... No perfect circles allowed. :) And then I cut slits all around like in the picture below.

And then I pulled out some of the slits so that it looks three dimensional.

And glued it onto the button that is on top of the first paper flower.

Then I put another button in the middle.

So here is one version of a paper flower. Then, I had to fool around a little with papers and magazines I found laying around. I found a very cool catalog I had. Here are some flowers I made from that. Here is a paper and yarn flower and a paper and yoyo flower. You can learn to make yoyo's from this blog or you can look on Youtube for a video. Search for "Fabric Yoyos". There's lots of videos showing how to make them. Beware: They are addictive to make. For the "flower" with the kitty button, I took yarn and wrapped it around 3 fingers and kept wrapping it until it was puffy and then tied it in the middle and puffed it out. Then I glued it onto a paper cut out flower and added the kitty button. Easy peasy and fun.

So here are some of the other pictures of this square wreath.

The square wreaths sometimes seem a little empty in the middle so for this one I cut out some letters to spell the word "Grow". I thought that would be appropriate for both flowers AND my granddaughter. :)

Well, I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed making these flowers and embellishing my square frame wreath. Thanks, again, Jessica for having us. You have such a cute blog.  I'm going over to visit the blogs in Grow. Swap. Share. It's a blast!! Come along for the fun, everyone! Best wishes, Linda