A Proffittable Life: Jellybean Wreath or Shelf-Sitter

It's beginning to look like spring around here, and that always makes me excited about pastels, warm weather, and jellybeans! I always think that jellybeans (and a lot of the Easter candy) are almost too pretty to eat. I also took a look around my holiday tupperwares in the attic and found that I am woefully remiss on spring/Easter decor. So I created a modern jellybean wreath.

It's actually become more of an empty frame that's sitting on a shelf with some other pretty photos with a pastel, spring theme. But it's really easy to convert it into a wreath (my doors here are all solid wood and since we're renters I can't really poke a hole in them to hang up my wreath).

Anyway, here's what you'll need for this project:
a photo mat, or cardboard frame, or an artist canvas panel (prestretched)
one to two bags of jelly beans
small filler beads, one tube or one bag
hot glue gun and several hot glue sticks
a length of coordinating ribbon
a spray can of shellac or clear protective gloss

If you're using an artist canvas panel like what I did with my project, you'll require a pencil, a ruler, and an x-acto blade. I used an artist canvas panel because I had one sitting around that wasn't being used, and likely would never be used. It was 8x10 and I cut the middle out of it to create a border, but if you have a photo mat around it'll work just as well.

Here's a photo of my prepared canvas panel. I've measured 2 inches into the surface all around the edges, then traced a line, and cut along that line with my x-acto blade. Here's an x-acto blade tip for you: always make several lighter cuts along the same cutting line rather than forcing down hard and making one single bold cut.

Once I had the template, all I had to do was go to town hot-gluing down the jellybeans.

I may or may not have eaten a few while completing this project. Anyway, once I had gone all around the perimeter, being careful to make the pattern seem random but not putting the same color next to each other, I filled in the small voids left behind with some cute seed beads that I had leftover from a previous project.

Once those were in place, I took the whole thing outside and cleaned off the spiderwebs that you get from using a hot glue gun. I HATE those things, but I haven't yet found a way to avoid them. Once I had the design like I liked it, I put several thin layers of a clear protective gloss over the entire surface. It's best to use several thin layers rather than doing one thick spray-over. After it had dried, I hot-glued a pink ribbon to the back for hanging.