Reuse ~ Repurpose: Week 4

Pattern for this I found online

  
It's a Paper Flower Bonanza! Yes, I went crazy with flower-making... same weekend as the wax hearts, actually! (The living room was a complete disaster! Ha ha!)

Where buttons were too small, I backed them with large sequins

I added feather ribbon to the center of some

My boyfriend taught me how to make these!

I made several different designs

Found this style online

All four types of paper flowers I made

In this week's Reuse ~ Repurpose, I have reused scraps from my book-making papers, which I keep in a box. They're usually of varying widths and heights, so this kind of project was perfect for them! I also used an old catalog that I had received in the mail. And I also used paper that was saved from the last time I purchased some breakables, and the store wrapped them in butcher paper. All the paper here was gathered from places all over my craft room, and none of it was purchased specifically for this project.

For the top flower, I used six segments, rather than the five shown in the kusudama tutorial. And for some of these flowers, I added the glittery stamen using feather ribbon that I had from Michael's, bought a while back for wrapping gifts and possible crafting. I found this online tutorial that's really simple!

For the purple fan-like flower, I folded four pieces of paper using a fan fold. Then I folded those each in half, length-wise. The four segments will then be one quarter of the flower, and you can just glue them together, or use tape if you haven't any glue. The instructions for this were in French, in an old edition of Marie Claire Idées, so I can't reprint it for you, but it's easy.

The button flowers are made using strips of paper, looped around in a circle, and then pressed down in the center so that the middle of the circle and the two ends come down on top of each other. I punched a small hole through all three papers and strung them using waxed thread (though you can use any kind of heavier-type thread and even pipe-cleaners, if you have some) using the button at the top to hold it all together. Then each additional strip is looped, hole-punched, then strung under the last. If you would like a tutorial on this, let me know!

Due to a Firefox freeze-up, I lost the link for the recycled catalog flowers/rosettes tutorial, but they are simple to make: cut through a catalog, making sure that you include the part of the spine that has a staple in it. You want about 2-3" in width, all the way across the top or bottom of a catalog that has at least 30 pages. Mine had about 60 pages. After you've cut a sort of mini-catalog, you're going to take one of the center pages, add some glue (I used a glue stick) to the bottom of the strip you're holding, and adhere it to itself at the crease. You continue in this fashion until it's all looped & glued. Then you flip it over and finish the other half. Once complete, if you used a smaller catalog, you'll want to do another and then glue the two halves together. If you used a larger one, like I did, then you're done! (If this isn't clear, I'd be happy to do a tutorial, just let me know. I looked and looked online, and in my history and couldn't find the link for you. I apologize.)

I haven't yet actually strung them together in a permanent way. I'm not sure how I want to do it yet. When I figure it out, I'll post the photo for you!