This post contains affiliate links. If clicked on and a purchase is made I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you) to support this blog.

St. Patrick’s Day Paper Pinwheel Wreath

My plain white front door needed a bit of dressing up so I decided to make a St. Patrick’s Day wreath to give it some color. I don’t have a bit of Irish in me but my husband does and I like a good cold beer occasionally. Close enough!

The craft supplies you will need depends, of course, on what you want your wreath to look like. You can make the same kind of wreath for Easter, Independence Day, or just because… Just change out the colors and images. This will not hold up in the rain, so you might want to make yours an indoor wreath. Mine will come inside at the first hint of a sprinkle.

Supplies:

• Paper for your pinwheels. This can be wrapping paper, scrapbooking paper or whatever you find that can be folded up and stay stiff. I bought green construction paper because I needed to practice and it was inexpensive. And a couple sheets of scrapbooking paper.

 

And/or

• Pre-made paper fan set. I bought one of these, too. Just in case I totally messed up on my own pinwheels.

 

Plus

• Wreath form. I chose a small styrofoam one that was flat on one side so the pinwheels would fit right against it. If your wreath form will show, you can wrap it in burlap ribbon before you apply your pinwheels.
• Ribbon to hang the wreath with.
• Accessories appropriate to the holiday – I bought gold coins and sparkly shamrocks.
• Scissors, ruler, pencil, glue gun, pins, stapler.
• Double sided tape. I did not find the regular scotch tape helpful but I had it out just in case.

Start by learning how to make your pinwheels. I am not a crafty or artistic person by nature so it took a few tries to get it right. For large pinwheels, you cut 3 strips of your paper to the size you want and start folding like you did when you made fans in school. The larger the pinwheel, the fatter the folds. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You put the three strips of folded paper together and staple them or – and this would work better – use double sided tape, bringing them around to make your circle. You will cover the middle so that is not an issue.

For the small pinwheels you can just use one strip of paper, make the folds tiny, fold it in half so you have a crease, and staple on the crease. Then spread your pinwheel out and attach the sides to each other. I used glue and paperclips to hold them until the glue dried. They were too tiny to staple.

Design Improvised has a good tutorial on making pinwheels. Her directions are easy to follow.

I folded strips of paper and glued them to one side of pinwheel fold, then glued the other side of the strip to the pinwheel I was attaching it to.

Since I am not artistic and can barely draw a straight line, I drew around some shamrock templates on my construction paper and cut them out, then hot glued the shamrocks to the pinwheels.

Here is the finished wreath before I hung it on the front door. I ended up using the pre-made pinwheels but did have to cut one down a few inches since it was so large. I used pins to attach the pinwheels to the styrofoam form, sticking the pins in as close to the centers as I could since the centers would be covered up. I’m sure double sided tape would have been my friend in this project, but lacking that I found the glue gun to be almost as good and extremely necessary for the macro gluing needs.