Paper Medallions and Rosettes Tutorial

Vintage paper medallions with waxed paper rosettes

There's so much fun in repurposing pages from a worn out book! You can make these fancy vintage inspired medallions with paper rosettes with little effort. Just follow this picture tutorial and see how easy these really are to make. I made these a little different, no hot glue, no fumbling to bring paper to the center. I had so much trouble getting the paper to fall nicely using that other method.

For materials you will need these items:

2 5 3/4" x 7"  sheets of book paper (preferably something with natural aged color)

6  3" waxed kraft paper scalloped edge circles

6 3" sepia tones aged paper circles with text

1 white paper doily approx 6"

1 small grommet

twine or crochet thread

fancy shank button

3" x 3" chipboard circle or square

Tools for this project:

4 paper clips or clothespins

paper hole punch

grommet setter

crochet hook

scissors

paper glue

Score your 2 sheets of paper landscape style at  1/2" marks.
I ran the rounded end of my crochet hook along the score lines of my paper cutter.
Super easy!
Fold along the score lines. Notice the ends are both facing UP?
There's good reason for that! You'll see.

Wrap the center of each accordion together with crochet thread and tie in a not.
You should have two accordions tied together. 
Leave at least 4" tails. You'll need those for gathering everything together soon!

This image is kinda weird, right? Glue along one end of one accordion and attach it to the end of the other accordion. The two ends should be facing in the same direction, remember... the image above...
and when you have them lined up just perfectly, clip them along just the ends.
Flip the accordion over to be certain you have your folds nice and even.

Keep going all around the accordion pulling two ends together with glue and clipping.

The front should look like this. See the two openings! You need those for later.
While the glue sets up, punch some circles and then punch a hole in the center of those circles.

The holes will make it easy to pull everything together, no hot glue! No hot glue strings!

Next crinkle your circles by randomly folding them and squishing them in your fingers.

Unfold and stack your circles one text on top of one waxed paper ending with the text on top.

Line up the circles using your crochet hook.

This will help set the grommet a lot easier.

You might be able to skip this step but the grommet adds a little stability to these antique papers and makes threading the project a lot easier later on. You'll see...

You should have this.

Using the crochet hook, thread a 12" long twine or crochet thread through the shank button back.

And pull the thread through the grommet on your stack of circles

You should have this

Remember the two openings on the accordion center?

Pull one thread through each side of those openings. Use the crochet hook. It is so easy!

Pull the threads tight and tie in a double knot in the back.

The front should look like this

Start scrunching up the layers of circles one at a time around the shank button.

It should look like this when you finish

Push the crochet hook through the center hole of a doily and your chipboard backing

Like this, tie it in a knot and tape the ends down, pulling the strings together at one end.

You can hide all the backing mess with another scalloped edge circle. Punch a hole in the card to make the medallion a tag!

All finished! So easy! No hot glue required! No fumbling with a fold down center! You have a nice text pattern all around the medallion! Isn't this lovely!