Back To School Wreath

My Small Fry is starting Kindergarten in a few weeks and we are both beyond excited.  I am not excited because she will be gone, and I will only have 2 to wrangle most of the day (though that does have plenty of perks) but I am excited because I have ALWAYS LOVED SCHOOL.  As a little girl I played school more than anything else.  I even asked for a photocopier as a gift so that I could more easily make the assingments for my pretend students.  I love shopping for school supplies.  I always wanted to be a teacher and loved the 5 years I got to do it (well okay... let's be honest...I hated the last year because I was pregnant and miserable and didn't have my heart in it at all).  I love the smell of new crayons.  I love the idea of getting to be a SCHOOL MOM (which I know may or may not loose it's charm down the road).  I can't wait to pack lunches, hang up projects, volunteer at school and prepare after school snacks.  I am sure all you vetran moms are rolling your eyes thinking, "oh how fast you will get a grip lady" but for now at least I am just super excited about school.  And Small Fry is too.  She is smart and she loves friends and I think/hope she will just absorb every bit of new information she possibly can (and hopefully not drive the teacher crazy by correcting everything she says and does wrong).  

Well I know that school isn't quite starting but the store shelves are being lined with school supplies and I can hardly steer my cart away from them and since we are in the midst of school clothes shopping and my husband, who teaches school, is getting his classroom ready, the energy of a new school year is in the air around here and I just had to celebrate by making a "Back to School" wreath for our door. 

I did a lot of Internet searching for ideas for back to school wreaths but I wanted something really unique and not necessarily plastered with pencils, scissors and glue.  After seeing a book page wreath I got the inspiration to use loose leaf (is that even still in existence...seems like such an antiquated word) as the background for this wreath.  

 What I did was used a embroidery hoop as my base and then balled up sheets of loose leaf.  To hold them together I drizzled hot glue on the center of each sheet and then bunched it up (just like you would if you had made a mistake and were going to throw the paper away).

 I then glued these onto the base.  After doing one layer all around I decided that it needed more depth and added a second layer of loose leaf sheets.  If you think about this, it is really inexpensive, especially right now with school supplies being on sale.  And you can pick up an embroidery hoop at pretty much any thrift store if you don't have one already on hand.

Here is how it looks with 2 layers-I love it.

 For decorations I wanted to keep it pretty simple.  I used mini chalkboards to write the words on.

 For the apples I got my inspiration from no biggie and made a pretty similar version of their paper apple except I used a piece of a tree branch for the stems (hot glued to the back).

 I love how it turned out and it was so easy.  Small Fry was so excited for a school thing on the door, except that she reminded me that she hasn't ever gone to school so how can she be going "back to school."  Smart alec.

Just in time for school to start, you could totally whip this up in an hour or less.  It would be perfect for your front door or for a teachers door for that matter.  Doesn't it just put you in the mood for school?

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