Happy Hump Day, friends! Hope you are having a good week and are slowly but surely getting ready for Christmas, which is oh…one week away! I still have a bit of shopping to finish up but I have all my final gifts planned out so I should be in good shape! This week, I’ve been knocking out neighbor, teacher and friend gifts right and left. These are some of my favorite kinds of gifts to put together because I don’t like to spend a ton of money (because let’s be honest, it adds up!), but I still want to give gifts that are unique, thoughtful and special. I am super excited to share today’s project: a starburst wreath I  made out of Christmas pencils (!!!) for Henry’s pre-school teacher. I’ve been leaking sneak peeks over on Instagram over the last week because I was just loving putting this together. I am SO smitten with the final result, I almost want to keep it for myself!

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This pencil wreath is a twist on the pencil wreaths you tend to see around the new school year. The holiday colors on the pencils make it fun, whimsical, and oh-so-perfect for a teacher!

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This idea was born when I stumbled upon these sets of 10 Christmas pencils in the Target Dollar Spot (of course!). I snagged 6 packages, sure that would be enough (ha!). I also picked up a 6″ wood round (found in the floral department) and a die-cut snowflake, both from Michaels. All together, this wreath came in at about $10!!

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If you can find these items, here are similar supplies from Amazon!

 

I started by painting the wooden round bright red…

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…and the snowflake teal blue!

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While my paint dried, I separated out my pencils and started to play with various design options, ultimately landing on the pattern of green:blue:red:blue:green.

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To ensure all the pencils were glued at the same “height” around the circle, I marked a one inch line on all the green pencils with a sharpie.

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I then hot glued all the pencils around the back of the wooden circle, the green pencils inset one inch, the blue pencils butted up to the circle’s edge, and the red nestled in between the blues…all with erasers pointing out. The hot glue was awesome at securing the pencils to the wood quickly and securely! I haven’t had a one pop off!

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I wanted to add some dimension to the wreath with the remaining pencils. Using a hack saw and miter box, I trimmed two inches off the end of each pencil and then sharpened each one to a point (yes, with a manual sharpener :/ )

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I then hot glued the pencils to the front of the wooden round. This time the erasers were toward the center, with the points facing out. (Notice the opening at the top…I ran out of pencils and Target was out when I went back for more. It’s not a huge deal since the snowflake covers it up…but if you make this, 7 packages of pencils would be ideal!)

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I finished off the wreath by securing the blue snowflake to the front of the wreath/pencils with Gorilla Glue Super Glue. I chose this over hot glue because 1) it’s super strong glue, and 2) since this was the front of the wreath, I didn’t want globs of hot glue leaking out!

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The last step was to string some red twine through the hole on the blue snowflake…

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…and hang it up!

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I actually made those cone wreaths 3 years ago and had them in my Christmas stash. I dug them out to style these photos and just couldn’t get over how well everything worked together. Like I said, I sorta wanted to keep this on display in my own house 😉

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I’m thinking I should maybe take a step back from my holiday decor more often because I am loving all these fun Christmas crafts this year! On Friday, I’ll show you the little gifts we’ve whipped up for school and neighborhood buddies! See you then!

Megan

See You Soon!
Megan