Music Repurposed

I LOVED playing the piano when I was younger.  I never had any formal lessons, but my mom taught me how to read music.  I was far from a Beethoven in training, but I loved the piano nonetheless.  About a year ago, we gave away our piano.  I was sad, but Mr. Spouse threw a party in the wake of it’s departure.  He HATED that thing.  Randomly, my mom gave away her piano this year also, but she decided to keep all the sheet music and piano books that she had growing up.  These are the same piano books and sheet music I played when I was a kid.  Being the nostalgic sap that I am, I asked mom if she wouldn’t mind parting with all those piano books and she gladly handed them over.  Now, as much as I wanted the piano books for memory’s sake, I wanted them for decorating even more. I've been DYING to make a vintage music sheet wreath and now I had PLENTY of music sheets to start my project! 

You’ll need a styrofoam wreath, some white ribbon, music sheet, and some hot glue.  First you’ll need to cover the entire wreath with the white ribbon.  I ran out of ribbon and ended up finishing it off with some random off white burlap I had leftover from another project.

Now you’ll need to start rolling your sheet music.  I *might* have thrown out a few choice words as I was starting this part of the project.  I couldn’t get the darn sheets to roll the right way, so it took a few little trial & errors before I perfected my method.  This is what worked best for me…

Start by rolling your paper on the bottom right side of the paper.  I found that it was easiest to roll when the very tip {bottom} of the cone was in the middle of the paper.

Now just keep rolling…

and rolling some more.  Roll ‘til there’s nothing left!  When you get to the very last little bit of your paper, take some hot glue and run it along the edges.  Finish rolling to secure.

I made a little over 60 cones for my wreath.

When they cones are all rolled, it’s time to start securing them to the wreath.  I placed a cup in the middle of my wreath so that I could get the tips even all the way around.  This was just a good little guide.

Now start gluing the music sheets down all the way around the wreath in one single layer.  I don’t have pictures of this part because I was slackin’.  After you get the first layer secured, take the additional cones and secure them on top of the first layer.  I secured mine in the middle of every other cone.  {Is this making ANY sense at all?!?!?!?}  I liked the way it looked, but I wanted a little something *extra*, so I made a little accordian-fold pennant and glued it to the center of the wreath.  Then I made a burlap rosette using THIS tutorial and hot glued that to the top of the pennant. 

It turned out a bit larger than I expected, but I.LOVE.IT!!!!!!  I made it with the intention of keeping it up just during the holidays, but I think it’s got a permanent home in my foyer.  It just makes me happy :)  I think I want to take a small monogram and put it in the middle of the rosette, but that *might* be overkill ;)

I hung it up by taking some ribbon and making a loop that I hot glued to the foam.  Worked like a charm!

Everything’s bigger in Texas, and this wreath is NO exception ;)