This was going to be my summer of bookbinding, life, however, had a different idea and I have spent most of my summer away from my studio. So with limited supplies, but a bunch of crepe paper, I have been crafting flowers!
I am not new to creating paper flowers so when I got the urge to make them, I knew what I was getting into. I started with a kit, but then had to make a few trips to the craft store and I got a friend to bring me some my stashed paper from home!
The kit I got was for ranunculus flowers that I got from Lia Griffith and it got me going. Lia Griffith has the best crepe paper, but I mostly use her stuff for inspiration (to get all the good stuff from the website you have to be a member, which I am not.) My favorite resource is my How to Make Flowers with Dennison Crepe Paper pamphlet book from 1948 (so don’t go looking for Dennison crepe paper!) It has a lot of tips and tricks and some great patterns in it, so I end up using a mix of old and new techniques. I also tend to modify and create my own patterns.
One thing everyone seems to agree upon is that it is fun to tint the petals! I usually use my soft pastels, but since I am lacking them I hit up the dollar store to get some cheap color for my flowers! Eyeshadow isn’t as saturated as pastels, but if you are going for subtle, they are great, and the bit of shimmer in them looks pretty good. I just avoided the super glittery ones, but if you want to do fantasy flowers go for it.
You can go super high tech with the flowers, and if you are making a lot of flowers, like for a wedding, you might want to invest in a cutting machine that can cut all your crepe paper parts out for you, but I keep the cutting out basic. Luckily you can cut out many petals and leaves at once! You fold up the paper, and if you want you can pin or staple the pattern to it, and cut out about six petals at a time.
So I just kept going, looking at a lot pictures and actual flowers, and trying to recreate them. I made cosmos, wild roses, poppies and ranunculus flowers.
It was fun to try and make the flowers as realistic as possible. For the poppy centers, it is common to cut a strip of fringed paper to glue around the center, but leaving the paper as is looks bulky and solid. Rolling the fringes makes for a more natural looking center.
Crepe paper is a super fun medium to work with, you can stretch it, ruffle it, curl it, and it takes color well (but it can be a bit messy) and it’s texture is great for flowers. I like the challenge of making beautiful flowers that look mostly real (the ranunculus were never satisfactory, but the pattern made pretty flowers!) and coming up with new and improved patterns.
And they last a lot longer than real cut flowers! Enjoy!
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