Whimsical Tissue Paper Flowers

             After taking a roadtrip for two weeks and returning home to begin immediately searching for a job (remember? My book store job closed, so sad! But life marches on) I have been swamped and unable to bring you any tutorials! I am now preparing for my very FIRST craft selling event (and it's for a great cause! Go check out the Toco Festival in Jellystone Park!) and I'm totally excited and TOTALLY scrambling to make sure my friend and I have enough items to sell. So, unfortunately I'm leaving you AGAIN without a tutorial. Instead I leave you with a fun concept and I'm sure all you crafty  whips out there can figure out where I am going with this ;) .

                  

Originally, I had a photo of the inspiration craft on here but I removed it because I did not have permission to use the photo, so to be safe I removed it. Sorry for any confusion!

  

My craft today is inspired by some browsing through Pinterest, where I found a wonderful tutorial on oversized, dreamy tissue paper flowers, and you can find the tutorial for them at Design Sponge. They are made by a company called Ruche, and they gave a great description on how to make them, but I wanted to make them for a window display and didn't want to get into chicken wire and cement (I tend to injure myself with chicken wire, and I get REAL messy with cement!). My budget was also...well, pretty much nothing. More or less, I had about $6 and whatever items I could find on hand. 

See? There's even a pile of junk sitting on the floor around my pretty flowers (and by junk I mean supplies I thought I might destroy to make more flowers!). 

To create my smaller scale version of those whimsical flowers:

For the flower stem:

Cut a piece of strong cardboard (I used a box that a shelf came in) into a slightly curved shape as "tall" as you want your flower to be. The flowers shown here are actually about 3 feet tall, and the curve just adds a bit of dimension to the shape. Then take either another piece of long cardboard or use poster board  (about 5 inches shorter than the curved piece) and bend into a "triangle" shape to add stability and dimension (You can see the straight line down the middle of the pink flower- this is the poster board). Hot glue that to the curved piece of cardboard, starting at the part that you will use as the top. 

Take a smaller piece of cardboard, about 5 inches in height by about 4-5 inches wide. Cut a slit in the bottom of the curved cardboard piece, and slide the 5x5 inside to use as a bottom stablizer (you may want to trim this to be wider at the bottom as a triangle shape to give a more natural flower stem shape). 

Take 2 toilet paper rolls as cut them in half. Then cut a piece of posterboard big enough to fit the curved board, the 5x5 board, and the now 4 pieces of toilet paper tube (one on each side of the stem). Hot glue this poster board to the bottom of everything, creating a base for the flower. Use heavy paper (I used tightly rolled newspaper) or another weighted agent and fill the toilet paper rolls. Make sure the rolls are also glued to the cardboard flower stem. 

For the Flower:

Cut a piece of poster board in an oval roughly the size of your hand (maybe a little bigger, depending on the flower size). Hot glue that to the top of the flower stem. This is now the base of your flower. Cut out large, tear drop shaped "petals" and hot glue them to the base as you desire. 

To finish it off:

Wrap the flower stem in green tissue, making sure to tuck loose tissue paper ends away if you can, then hot glue on  nice, big, loose leaves for added whimsy.

                            

"Read" Upcycled Art

Supplies:

• Newspaper
• Scissors
• Hot Glue
• Cardboard (circle, for back of flower)
• Cardboard boxes (For "Canvas)
• Tissue paper in blue, green, and white
• Floral pins and (optional) floral staples
• Stapler

   I made this for an independent bookstore that I work at. I'm always working on something (or, rather, I was, but we are currently going out of business. BOO!) to brighten up the store and add a little character. Originally, I made this Newspaper Dahlia by following the steps using This Lovely Design at Vively Online for her Paper Medallion.
             It took alot of cutting, rolling, and gluing! I was initially going to make two but... this is more of an "at home" project because it was getting pretty messy. I was going to make one for each side of our TV display screen, but when I held up just the Dahlia against the wall...well, it looked almost dangerous. I'm guessing the newspaper colors against the naked wall made it look pretty sharp? Either way, I thought it needed a little more OOMPH! I decided to take two empty snapple boxes (really, any rectangular semi skinny box would do, I just had snapples on hand and they are a great shape) and I attached them together using hot glue and some floral staples that I had from a different project. I added those for reinforcement.


Lay out a double layer of blue tissue paper, and attach to the inside of the "canvas" using stapler (out of sight). Choose location for the flower, then glue generously onto the back and place on the "canvas". After this has dried, use floral pins and staples through insides of flower petals, pushing pins from the front of the canvas, through the cardboard, and bending them in the back. This should keep the tissue paper from ripping and should keep the flower attached with more stability.

Roll the green tissue paper into a "stem" shape, making sure the bottom tucks inside the back of the canvas, and the top end is hidden under the flower petals. Staple the bottom on. While the rest is still loose, cut out the leaf shape from another piece of green tissue paper and dab glue on it, beneath the stem, then again at the tip of the leaf (do not glue too much, just enough to attach it, but still have it look "leafy"). Attach the stem over the raw edge of the leaf with a bit of glue, then attach with glue under the flower petals.

For "READ": Roll up a thin piece of white tissue paper, lay out the shape of your letter, then put a thin line of glue on the back of the paper. Make the shape and, as the glue is still wet, use floral pins through the white tissue paper and all the way through the back of the cardboard. Use as many of these as you'd like, they add a bit of charm AND stability to your letters. For safety's sake, take some pliers and bend all of the floral pins to keep them from stick straight out (like this ones on this piece of art do, whoops!).

It's very lightweight, so hang wherever you need something pretty in your life. I hope this inspires you to make your own variation! If so, let me know! =) Thanks for stopping by.