How to Make Paper Flowers or Ahoy, Daisies!

I promised my mother I would make paper flower centerpieces for my grandmother's 80th birthday extravaganza. I've made the giant pompoms before, so I thought it would be easy, peasy! And it was, except for the thing where I had to kind of readjust the recipe.

I started with two packs of rainbow tissue paper that I bought on amazon. And I thought I would just use my rotary cutter and cut the paper into 6" squares! Not so fast, Courtney! It was not easy at all! The paper doesn't stay together and you have to really push to get through the paper and be precise. Which made my edges shaggy.

Luckily I purchased two packs! One is enough for at least 60 flowers, with a bunch of squares left over. I never used the brown and used the black sparingly.

Once the paper was cut, I divided it into piles of colors. It was easier to group them by color family. The tissue paper is really hard to separate!

Barkley was a little upset I took his spot on the bed.

For each flower, I used six sheets of paper. If I added a middle, it was usually the seventh piece. And I just kinda played around with color. Also buy extra yellow paper. It seemed I never had enough yellow or white.

Here I did four sheets of light pink, two dark pink and a yellow band.

Stack them neatly, centering the yellow.

Fold like a fan and wrap the center with a pipe cleaner. The loop is around the middle and the stem comes down. If you reverse the pipe cleaner, and use a green paper instead of yellow, it will look like leaves.

Trim the ends. This one is rounded, but you can also do triangle ends, like a daisy, or cut four slits for fringe ends. I didn't really deviate from the three ends. There were so many colors, you don't need to go crazy.

Now gently pull the yellow to the center and scrunch it. Then, separate all the layers.

When I got the layers all puffy, I kind of grabbed the bottom in my fist and squished it upwards. That seemed to make the flower more round. I had some issues with the sides separating and the flowers looking more like fluffy bow ties.

I know there are a ton of tutorials for flowers out there, but they all seemed to come together magically and be perfect. And I found I had to do a bit more scrunching to get them to look amazing. Plus, I needed to use the most amazing pirate book ever. Which no one seems to mention...

I'm calling this an alien, a big headed aloe vera...

I've always loved succulents, mostly because they are so architecturally beautiful. A little because I think they are aliens from another planet. How else do you explain ice plant and it's ability to take over any landscape?

Trust me, they're just biding their time until the invasion. Hopefully, since I take such good care of them, they express their love for me in flowers, I will not be one of the many taken into slavery and then cracked open to help soothe their sunburns.

Peony Raid

Trader Joe's has peonies! For $6.99!

I love that place.

Rest on your florals

How About Orange, one of my most favorite bloggers, featured a tutorial using fabric stiffener. Delightful! I love fabric...I also have a LOT of it. So I bought the product and gave it a whirl.

My only trouble was finding a surface on which to paint the fabric. I used parchment paper, but it wrinkled, which made my fabric wrinkle. And then aluminum foil, which I thought would speed up the drying time. Kinda. That seems to be the best, if not most wasteful option for me at the time.

Let me know if you know of a better way!

This pretty flower is for the amazing woman who will be hosting our craft night tonight. 

Framed, I tell ya.

I'm having my craft group next week. We will be embroidering and I needed to create a practice pattern with a bunch of stitches. This little guy has the blanket stitch, the split stitch, the backstitch and some french knots.

Then, because our projects are gifts, I popped it in an old dirty frame to give the ladies an idea about how their finished product will look. I really should've ironed the muslin first.

I stretched the fabric over the glass and topped it with the mat.

Close-up of the flower:

I used a piece of a felted sweater for the flower.

Stuff I did while waiting for a new camera.

So maybe I didn't "bloom" the roses and wildflowers. But they were not at all entertaining before my camera broke.

Flowers, chocolate, promises they don't intend to keep.

I found two of these sconces at a little store nearby. Plus a matching ceiling fixture. I think they were originally patina colored. Like a green-blue matte. And someone painted them brown. Yuck. I still have two cans of sea green. And I thought I'd paint the inside silver metallic.

I'm a little worried John will think I'm crazy. I'm glad I love them enough to tell him to shove it if he does.

Party gone out of bounds...

My friend's husband planned a surprise party for her last Saturday. I volunteered to decorate because I have a giant crush on her. So my other favorite ladies (sigh, jealous rage.) helped make and hang and arrange the decorations with me. (Which is an excellent excuse to constantly hang out with amazing women).

A couple of things, though. Even though I emailed with the catering lady at the venue, I never got a proper photo of the space. So I had hanging things with no place to hang them. And, for whatever reason, my brain never fully realized that it would be dark around 8:30. So I never got the great "magic time" photos. The top floral photo was taken in my kitchen after I somehow managed to keep every single flower. I think the birthday girl should have ended up with a bunch. But there I was walking to my car with everything.

Hartwell and I made bouquets this morning with the birthday flowers and took them to some of our favorite ladies on the block. (Well, the ones who were home). After our first delivery he said, "I wanna take someone AGAIN."

Lady Marmabug

Not being natural gardeners, John and I are amazed at this squash plant that grew out of our "compost." It's like a fake compost because we built the circle to house an olive tree and have been composting in the circle to get the soil all ready. We've already grown a bunch of potatoes, same reason, and now then giantest squash plant in all the land.

While I was trying to capture its hugeness, I noticed bugs crawling all over it. Like a whole world living in my squash plant. Ladybugs and bees were working. I think it needs it's own reality show.