Tuesday's Tutorial - Paper Flower Bouquet

Ann, of DuctapeandDenim.etsy.com, has graciously allowed me to share with you her Paper Flower Tutorial. These gorgeous flowers can be made out of various papers and colors to match seasons. This one is for fall colors, but can be adapted to fit any season.

Jordi got in the mood to make our paper flowers again a few days ago so we made ourselves a bouquet and put a kit in our Etsy store, too. These are really easy & quick to make. And you can make them in whatever colors you want. I always like to include some of my old paper in them and ink the edges but you wouldn't have to do that.

Here's how to do it:
Punch several circles for each flower. I used 5 different punches ranging from 3" to 1". Some scalloped, some not. If you don't have punches you can cut them out, or even tear them. It just takes longer.

Wad up the papers. This is the fun part! Make them as wrinkled as you want -- or don't even wad them if you want a cleaner look.

Ink the edges and some of the folds. I've also used glimmer mist on some and wadded them up while they were still wet. That works good, too. Color Box chalk ink in chestnut roan is my favorite right now for this.

Here's the stack of circles ready to assemble. You can glue them together and then glue a button on top or use a brad. Today I decided to use up some of the brads in my desk. I inked my craft stick (Jo just bought ANOTHER box of 1000 so we have to make LOTS of these now!!!) and glued some leaf punches on, too. Although when you put them in a display like I show above you can't really see the leaves. For the bouquet in the first photo I stuck an old piece of styrofoam in a clean veggie can, stuck my flowers in, and covered the styrofoam with shredded papers. Then I took 2 strips of coordinating papers and taped them on and tied a piece of jute around the whole thing. It probably took me 20 minutes to do the whole bouquet. You've probably seen these on my blog before. We've made bouquets for Valentine's Day, July 4th, and Christmas.

I think I'm going to make some flowers and glue magnets on the back for my fridge. I need new magnets. :-)

Check out her blog to see the full tutorial. Thanks Ann for sharing this fun and creative project!