Ooh la la, paper flowers! Aren’t they just beautiful? I think it’s one of our most loved kits, are our paper flower kits, we have so many of them, and this is a brand new one we are just coming out with. We discovered that our wonderful origami paper actually works for the paper flowers as well. So they’re all coordinated with each other. They come in two sizes, big and little. So two new kits for you guys.
Let me show you have to make the paper flowers. It’s the same system for all the kits, so we’ll do this kit, but don’t worry you can use the same technique for every single one of them. So the first thing to figure out is what size kit you want. Let me show you the difference between the big and the small. The big have wires on the back of the leaves, obviously they’re bigger too, but there’s internal difference, these have wires because you need to adjust the petals. The little flowers are more casual and they only have the wire on the leaves. I’m going to make the big flower kit because it’s bigger and you can see it easier. So you notice it has two different rows of petals, they’re two different sizes, this one is slightly smaller than this one. And you can put then in any arrangement you want. This one we did one pattern on the inside and the reverse paper on the outside and you can see from the back its just the reverse. So this petal has that back thing on it, anyway, you get the picture. So there it is, now we will start making it. I think the easiest thing to do is make all the components, it’s a tedious job making these flowers, but it’s so rewarding. So this is a bunch of the flower petals that are all made. So let me show you have to make those first. You get in your kit, piles of these little pieces of paper, and were going to, this is the pattern, so you cut the pattern out, luckily I already have one cut out, and you put it on your paper and you could use this pattern paper or you could use some plain paper, or you could mix and match, this really brings out the creativity I think in everyone. So the first thing you do is you trace around this. And you know, I believe in multi tasking. So this is the kind of thing you could get these all pre traced and then you can sit down and sit down and watch your favorite episode of CSI and do cutting, and then the next day you’ll have piles of petals all done. And so I love this Kai scissors, they’re super super sharp. We buy them in a special way. They’re double sharpened so they come with the factory edge and they’re double sharpened again so they’re much much sharper than most scissors and they’re just a joy to use. I highly recommend these to anyone who wants to do a lot of cutting. So here’s a leaf I have cut out, you can see it doesn’t take too much concentration and if you go out of lines it doesn’t make any difference, so obviously you’d make a whole bunch of these.
Then you’d have to decide which side is which side so, I’m going to make it like this, and now I’m going to take my wires and you get a whole bunch of them in the kit, but you don’t get PVA which is I highly recommend. This PVA is specifically formulated for idiots like me who can’t open the jar, got it okay, it’s specially formulated for paper. And people always wonder why we have so much in here, and we do for one good reason, it costs the same amount to make this jar as it does in a small jar, so we figure, better to give you all of it and then you can throw it away if you don’t use it, but if you’re a big user then you’ve got a lot. We’re always checking that out. So you take your thing here, your wire, and you stick it in, oh and by the way, I’m showing you what to do, but in truth you get a wonderful set of instructions that have everything all written out step by step, but for some people, like me, its much easier to watch somebody. So the first thing that you do is you put your glue on this and you want just a little bit , people think I’m just nuts because I get so glued up, but that’s just who I am. And then you put this in, the depth of the jar is about right for this and now I’m going to just ooze it on. Always keep a wet paper towel handy.
So that ones done, not quite done, you want it to stick, now it’s done enough for it to dry so ill put that over there. And I’ll just keep doing them, ill do one more for you, this time ill do it on the other side, incase you don’t believe me. This time I won’t use my fingers, ill just go like that. Give it a little bit of a roll, then put it off the dry. It’s amazing that that’s all you have to do. Check them occasionally and make sure they’re still stuck.
So then you have to make for each flower, three, four, five, on the outside and five on the inside. Then you’re going to make the center thing which is a piece like this we’ve already cut it, but believe me its not difficult, you just take a piece of paper roughly 5 inches or so by 2 and a half inches or so and you just with scissors or a mat knife or whichever you’re most comfortable with. And then you get a stick sort of the foundation of everything, I’m going to use it as a brush and sort of roll it like this so it sticks as I roll it. I’m going to wipe this off because I don’t need that. And I’m going to start, rolling it up around the stick and it just goes rather quickly and this is where it gets rather gluey. I have my stick up way to high, but you can just go in with scissors and cut that back, I’m going to pull it back now, there. Because it doesn’t need to stick out that much. And then you just roll around and roll around and wonder why you’re getting glue all over. And pretend you’re having fun. You will be so thrilled when you’re finished. There. Now wipe your fingers off before you go any further. This one is too fragile, you have to let it dry, here is a finished one, this has got a lot more than five inches rolled around it.
I want to show you something fun, you can do this beforehand or afterwards and you can take these little stamens or whatever they might be and you can jut use your scissors to curl them if you want, this is sort of like that old curling ribbon that was so fun to do when you were a kid. You can just go around and curl this paper. The edge of the scissors works as a perfect foil for that. I think a little glitter on the ends of some of these would be really cute too. So now I’m all the way around, but I could go around and around until this is all sort of a poof of curled petals.
So you take your internal piece and you start with this small petal and you start just putting them together like this, and you get, I would recommend doing one row and making it all finished and then here’s an example of that, this is one role of petals and this pathetically uncurled center, it would be so much cuter if it was curled. And then you add the next row. What I do want to show you is how to do the next part. You get this wonderful roll of green floral tape, this is exactly the same tape that a florist uses when they’re making corsages, and you try to find out where it starts, sometimes the funniest things trip you up, alas I am failing so I am just going to yank and see what happens. Ah hah, they were making things difficult for me, this was planned insubordination. So anyways, here you are, here’s your tape, I’m just going to do a roll right over it, you learn to do this really fast, but you just roll it down like this. So it goes really fast and it’s wonderful, I learned to do this when I worked with a florist which I did when I was eighteen years old, and it was great training and the flower kits were part of it. So there’s my first thing, then comes the second one, so in other words, if I were to be adding another layer of petals down here, I would add them like this and slowly do it again, but I would add one petal at a time. So, to recap. Make your center thing, take your leaves, do the first five, you just nestle them all together like this. I’ll do a couple. This it he time you get to pick which pattern goes where. So I’ll just put three on. The quantity of these leaves is quite arbitrary. So you want them all to be all about the same length. I’m just going to squeeze it together like this, this green stuff has a sticky quality to it so you position them. I’m going to put one more right here. And then you just add your tape, you begin it, and then you just spin it around. Positioning them is important, because once you get going, I could stop here if I wanted to, and then adjust my petals if I thought that they were in a bad position. I’ve only done four, but that’s fine. It’ll work fine with four. It’s really a creative thing. You can use your own paper. So then you just do the spinning part again, and you actually only have to go this far before you add the next set of petals. So you don’t have to go all the way down. So now you see I’m going to put on this one then the other directions. So that when I fold them all out, this will get folded to here, and then this one will be folded next. So now comes the next layer, and those just go on the same way. I’ll just put two on so you get the idea. You can put one on at a time if you’re nervous, you can put three on at a time. You can do it any way you want. And as you do these over and over again, you’ll get better and better. So there this is, and I’m just going to pull back these few petals so that you can see what we’re developing. Cute, huh? The leaves are exactly the same thing, except they’re green. You put the thing on the leaf, and then you add that at the very end. The kits come in all sorts of different patterns, let me show you our new Norsa ones because they’re so cute as well. See these have these wonderful prints. This will help to understand that you can buy, we sell just the wire and the green tape, and you can then just make them out of anything you want. We’ve done these out of our Norsa paper, and they’re just darling. This is what the kit looks like. This was a funny one that somebody upstairs in design made, it’s with me, the princess and my honey as a little boy. This is photocopied onto our Mohawk superfine paper, and then just trimmed out. You can put your puppy dog’s picture in there, you can do anything you want. These are really a creative opportunity. Happy flower making!
|
