Autumn Wreath ~ Made From Cricut

Autumn is my favorite time of year and I am slowly realizing the change in weather here in Georgia.  The hot peak of the day isn’t as brutal and the evenings are becoming lovelier to sit outside and enjoy the cooler breezes and watch my cats play in the backyard.  Soon we will notice the leaves starting to change color and that is when it will really hit home that fall is here.

This weekend, I will be dragging out my autumn decorations so that I can enjoy them a little longer this year before it’s time for Christmas.  While thinking of decorating with my wreaths and ceramic pumpkins, I decided to try my first Cricut project – a paper autumn wreath using my Cricut Expression.  Until today, the only things I had ever made with this incredible machine were cards.  So this is what I made using the Wild Card and Accent Essentials cartridges.

Details ~ I used two leaf shapes from Wild Card (pg. 43 – both leaf icons) and made the wreath base from Accent Essentials (pg. 33 – <Accent2>).  For the wreath, I hid the contour lines of the inside cuts so that just a solid wreath shape would cut.

Sizes ~ The maple leaf was cut at 6 inches, the elm leaf was cut at 4 inches, and the accent wreath shape was cut at 10 inches.  Note: I cut the wreath shape out of sturdy card stock twice and glued them together to stiffen up the base.  More wreath layers can be used of course, if desired, or if you have a deep cutting blade, chip board would work great.

Texture and Color ~ I used my Sizzix Texture Boutique to emboss the leaves with a Sizzix Damask folder and a Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder.  Then I used a hot glue gun to adhere the leaves in a random pattern (varying the colors, textures, and leaf shapes).  I went in one direction (I personally favored working counter-clockwise) and worked my way around the wreath base.  Where there were gaps or something else needed after staring at it a bit, I added more leaves.  I used three 12×24 sheets of Cricut card stock in shades of yellow, golden-yellow, and orange and used Design Studio to fill up the 12×24 mat with repeating leaf cuts.  For this wreath, I ended up using all of the leaves I cut.  There were 18 orange maple leaves, 18 yellow maple leaves, and 30 golden-yellow elm leaves for a total of 66 leaves.

Screen Shots via PDF ~ Attached are screen shots of how the leaves and the wreath base were cut in Design Studio.

• Autumn Wreath Using Cricut PDF
  

To finish the look, I used some buttons and rust colored ribbon from my stash and adhered it to the bottom with a hot glue gun.

This is my first project, so please let me know how I did.  Thanks for looking!

Vanessa

• (C) Cricut
• Accent Essentials
• Autumn Paper Wreath
• craft
• Cuttlebug Folders
• Fall Paper Wreath
• handmade
• paper wreath
• Sizzix embossing folders
• Wild Card
• wreath