Paper Chain a la Vintage Book

Somewhere out in the vast expanse of Blogland, I got a couple of ideas and put them together and came up with a plan that I had to have for our tree this year.

I decided to make a paper chain for our tree out of a vintage book and then glitter one edge of the paper chain.  Yummy.

First stop was Kinko's, where they cut off the binding of a 1940's book and then sliced the pages into thirds, lengthwise.  Alfredo was my Kinko's assistant, and, my, did the two of us have a time oooh-ing and aaah-ing over the warm, old pages, the bending of the strips into circles, the bliss that was to be my gilded vintage paper chain.  He told me about the garland he had made out of the pages of a vintage book . . . the folding, the wrapping, the draping.  The two of us stood there, enraptured, loving the other's idea, hands over our heart to still the wild, creative beating.  (Even better, he decided not to charge me!)

Once home, I turned half of my strips into circles, with glue and clothespins and left the other half as strips.

After filling a bowl with glue and another with chunky gold glitter, I dipped one edge of all the circles into glue and then glitter.

And then one edge of all the strips was dipped into glue and then glitter.

For several days, there was endless assembling, pinning, drying . . . and then finally the chain garland was lowered over the banister and draped around the tree.

I think Alfredo would be proud.