A few days ago, I wrote about our little girl's party. If you missed the post, it is here. The most important things she wanted for her party were flowers and butterflies. And we made just that.
One thing with little girls is that, they change their preferences every now and then. That is the same case with Akshara too. If today it is flowers, tomorrow animals and the day after robots. For that precise reason, I decided to keep anything that we use to be low profile, money and maintenance wise.
So we opted for colored craft papers, I followed this tutorial roughly, tweaking it as and how I needed. But the basics really are the same. I used a foam board to stick my flowers and butterflies. The technique could be easily applied to fabric, felt , crepe paper and be used for room décor, scrap booking or simply crafting for fun.
So here we go. Confession - I am not really good at doing tutorials I guess, so please bear with me and while trying adapt the way you feel comfortable.
Here are the supplies.
Step 1 : Here is where we draw the template of a petal. I wanted it to look like rose. So opted for this particular shape . You will choose the template of any flower you want here. To make it easier, just google something like "orchid petal template" and you can see the templates showing up.
Step 2 : Next thing to do is to cut out the petals, in multiples. To make varied size of flowers, cut them out in the desired sizes too.
Step 3 : Now, you cut through the middle of the petals. This is to bring on the curvy feel that flower petals have.
Step 4 : You will have the templates ready to be turned into petals from this point onwards.
Step 5 : With a tooth pic or ear bud curl up the end of the petals.
Step 6 : Remember the cut we made in the middle of the petals? Now we slowly stick the one loose edge to the other - one edge on top of the other. With this step it will start looking like a real petal.
Step 7 : Cut out a small circle and start sticking the petals in a round on the cut out circle. You can have 5, 6 or even 7 petals stuck together to make one flower.
Step 8 : Stick it on the foam board or any where. If you want to make flowers for a vase, then instead of gluing on the paper, glue on the tooth pic or skewers directly. Glue gun would be a better choice here since the strength of bond will be more.
There - you have paper flowers.
With the butterflies, I did the same. Cut out the template, and glued two together (glue only in the middle in a straight line, so that you can see the bottom wing clearly ) and directly stuck them on the board. Two is preferred to get a 3D effect and curling up the wings on the edges will help too.
I am not sure how convincingly I have put this out here. If you feel confused or feel this is lot of steps and complicated - please don't feel discouraged. It just feels that way for the first time. Once you do it once, you might even find easier ways and tweaks to this method. How do I know ? Because I felt the same way watching and reading tutorials a lot of times. And regularly put the idea away, sometimes for pure laziness! But have since found out that once you do it for the first time, it will feel "easy peasy!!!" and extremely satisfactory.
So, go ahead - craft away this weekend and have fun. For bonus points get kids to help and make it a family time.
Happy weekend, Please do come back on Monday for more fun @ This Design Journal.
Anima
One thing with little girls is that, they change their preferences every now and then. That is the same case with Akshara too. If today it is flowers, tomorrow animals and the day after robots. For that precise reason, I decided to keep anything that we use to be low profile, money and maintenance wise.
So we opted for colored craft papers, I followed this tutorial roughly, tweaking it as and how I needed. But the basics really are the same. I used a foam board to stick my flowers and butterflies. The technique could be easily applied to fabric, felt , crepe paper and be used for room décor, scrap booking or simply crafting for fun.
So here we go. Confession - I am not really good at doing tutorials I guess, so please bear with me and while trying adapt the way you feel comfortable.
Here are the supplies.
Step 1 : Here is where we draw the template of a petal. I wanted it to look like rose. So opted for this particular shape . You will choose the template of any flower you want here. To make it easier, just google something like "orchid petal template" and you can see the templates showing up.
Step 2 : Next thing to do is to cut out the petals, in multiples. To make varied size of flowers, cut them out in the desired sizes too.
Step 3 : Now, you cut through the middle of the petals. This is to bring on the curvy feel that flower petals have.
Step 4 : You will have the templates ready to be turned into petals from this point onwards.
Step 5 : With a tooth pic or ear bud curl up the end of the petals.
Step 6 : Remember the cut we made in the middle of the petals? Now we slowly stick the one loose edge to the other - one edge on top of the other. With this step it will start looking like a real petal.
Step 7 : Cut out a small circle and start sticking the petals in a round on the cut out circle. You can have 5, 6 or even 7 petals stuck together to make one flower.
Step 8 : Stick it on the foam board or any where. If you want to make flowers for a vase, then instead of gluing on the paper, glue on the tooth pic or skewers directly. Glue gun would be a better choice here since the strength of bond will be more.
There - you have paper flowers.
With the butterflies, I did the same. Cut out the template, and glued two together (glue only in the middle in a straight line, so that you can see the bottom wing clearly ) and directly stuck them on the board. Two is preferred to get a 3D effect and curling up the wings on the edges will help too.
I am not sure how convincingly I have put this out here. If you feel confused or feel this is lot of steps and complicated - please don't feel discouraged. It just feels that way for the first time. Once you do it once, you might even find easier ways and tweaks to this method. How do I know ? Because I felt the same way watching and reading tutorials a lot of times. And regularly put the idea away, sometimes for pure laziness! But have since found out that once you do it for the first time, it will feel "easy peasy!!!" and extremely satisfactory.
So, go ahead - craft away this weekend and have fun. For bonus points get kids to help and make it a family time.
Happy weekend, Please do come back on Monday for more fun @ This Design Journal.
Anima
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