Red White and Blue WREATH

Hey there! I’m Missy from Missy Dear and I love to craft and cook in my free time. I’m so excited to show you this fun, quick, and really easy paper rosette and wire star wreath today.

When I learned the theme of this post was going to be red, white, and blue a paper rosette wreath immediately popped into my head. I’m not sure why, but rosettes just scream summer and 4th of July to me. Maybe it’s because they kind of look like fireworks :). This wreath is perfect for the 4th and would look great hanging on your door all summer long. It’s also really easy and fast to put together – win-win! First you need to gather your supplies.

You will need:

-Decorative paper
-Paper cutter/scissors
-Score board (optional, but makes the folding so much easier)
-Glue gun or other adhisive
-Ribbon (for hanging the finished wreath)
-Rosette punch (also optional – I found mine at Hobby Lobby)
-Thin cardboard (like a cereal box)

Not pictured here but will be later in the post (sometimes I add things -like the gold wire stars – to my projects as I go so they don’t make it into the first supply picture 🙂 ):
-Gold aluminum wire
-Finishing nails
-Hammer
-Scrap Wood
-Wreath Form

Once you’ve gathered all that together, you need to decide what sizes you want your rosettes to be. Then you’re ready to start. Here are some pictures to show you the steps I’ll outline below.

Each rosette is made of one long piece of paper folded into a circle. This means the paper you use should be half the finished width of the rosette. So, since I wanted my largest one to be 8 inches across, I cut the paper into 4 inches strips. I needed 4 stripes for the biggest one and only 3 for the smaller ones (which were made with 2 and 3 inch strips).

Once you have your strips cut, you just need to get them into an accordion fold. To make it a little easier I used my score board and scored the lines before folding. For the largest rosette I used a 1 inch accordion. For the smaller ones I folded every half inch.

After they’re folded you can make the edges a little decorative. I used my punch, but you could also fold up the accordion then round the top edge, or even cut it to a point.

Then glue the strips into one long piece. Glue the ends together, fix any flattened folds and lay out your circle. To keep the rosettes tight I cut up some scrap paper and glued them to the back of the rosettes (shown on the blue one in the last picture above). To finish off the front and cover the hole, I cut some circles with pinking shears and glued them on (shown on the red one in the last picture).

Now, to make the wire stars. I hadn’t planned to use them on this project, but I had a few extra from a Christmas project sitting on my craft table and they looked super cute on the wreath, so I decided to add them. They’re easy to put together, too.

For my scrap wood I just used a round of an apple trunk. I had planned to use it in another project, but it cracked while it dried. Just draw out a star on the wood and hammer a finishing nail onto each point.

I got the gold wire from Hobby Lobby as well, but it was months ago. It’s a very flexible aluminum wire that is pretty thick, but lightweight. I wish I still had the packaging so I could tell you exactly what it is and the gauge, but you should be able to find something similar pretty easy. Just look around – probably the floral or jewelry isles.

I started the stars buy wrapping the wire around one nail with the tail hitting about where the intersection of two lines meet (does that make sense? you can kind of see it in the first picture). I found that it was easier to not cut a length of the wire, but to keep it spooled. Then rather then trying to wrap the wire, I just twist the star frame in a circle and guide the wire to follow the drawn lines (I can’t think of a better way to describe that, but you’ll see what I mean once you start).

After you’ve wrapped the star slide it off the form and cut the wire with a good long length of tail. I took that tail and wrapped it around each intersection of the star to keep it together.

Now you’re ready to start putting the rosettes and stars together! I love my wreath form. It’s a square grape vine wreath that I’ve used for years and years. I just switch out what I have attached to it for the holiday/season. So, instead of putting each thing onto the wreath individually, to make it easy for switching out later, I decided to glue everything to a cardboard backing that I could just wire to the wreath.

I started with some lightweight cardboard (like a cereal box) in the shape I wanted everything on the wreath. Then I laid all the rosettes out to see how I wanted it to look and glued them all starting with those that on the bottom.

Here’s a little trick. Since they would be stacked on top of each other there are some places that would be unsupported underneath. To fix that I made a few little accordion supports and glued them onto the empty spots. Then when I glued the top rosettes on they had a little something to hold them up so they wouldn’t sag.

All that’s left to do now is wire the backing to the wreath and it’s ready to hang!

I know that was a lot of steps so I hope it wasn’t too overwhelming! It really is such a fast and easy project and I love how it turned out! Give it a shot and I know you’ll like it too.

I have a lot of other fun and quick projects at Missy Dear. I’d love if ya’ll would hop over and check out a few of my other posts. If you liked this wreath, I think you’d also enjoy my Embossed Leather Sunglasses Case. Or, if food is more your thing I have a series called “Picked From the Tree” where I share same family recipes from the amazing cooks in my family tree. I especially love my grandma’s Cry Baby cookies.