The Art of Paper Flowers

Long-lasting Bouquets: The Art of Paper Flowers

For Mother's Day this year I wanted to have a centerpiece of flowers, but I wanted to keep my decorations afforadable, so I decided to make a paper flower arrangement. I knew that I had all the supplies in my craft room that I needed, which helped make it very affordable.

You can make paper flowers out of just about any paper you have in the house, different patterns and colors allow for variety in your bouquet. As I was looking around online, I found a lot of tutorials on how to make the flowers but not how to add stems to them. This tutorial includes both parts of the flower, the paper bloom and a wire stem.

Supplies:

• Paper
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun & Hot Glue
• Crafting Wire (easy to bend)
• Circle Cutter (if you have one)
• Dowel or Bamboo Skewer
• Small Vase
• Glass Marbles/Sand

From the outside of your circle to the center cut a spiral leaving an area in the center for the base of the flower.

Roll your flower from the skinny outside point to the center, starting around a very small dowel or bamboo skewer.

Once you have your paper flower rolled to the center, let the flower expand to the desired size. After you have your desired size, place a circle of hot glue on the base of the flower and press the center into the hot glue to hold it in place. You can also glue the base up the sides a bit to give your flower a different shape as seen in third to last photo.

Cut your desired length of crafting wire (cut them longer than you think you need so you can trim to adjust the height of your flowers as you arrange them in your vase)

Press the spiral into the hot glue and then place more hot glue over the top.

Hold until dry

To arrange my paper flowers I filled a small vase with glass marbles and then inserted my wires stems into the glass marbles, moving them around until I created the desired arrangement.

Visit www.bethericksondesigns.com for more tutorials and www.bethericksondesigns.com for printables to use in your own creative projects.

Source: www.bethericksondesigns.com

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