giant paper flowers d.i.y.

How about giant paper flowers? How have I made costumes for so long without making one of these babies? I was thinking how these would make a nice Valentine's Day gift for Stella's teachers and other special ladies in her life, and in mine.

They are so big they are hard to photograph!

They are so big they can swallow a small child!

I'm going to try something new and tuck the full tutorial underneath this, so if you can manage to find that tiny "read more" down below, click it and you can read more!

Oliver was paid in Pez for this modeling job. Mama needs a tripod!

The flower itself will use about 1 1/3 rolls of floral crepe paper which I have mentioned here ad nauseum. The two best sources are Castle in the Air (in Berkeley) and Carte Fini. I used a deep cream and a canary yellow for this one, and am waiting patiently for my sweet pea colored crepe to arrive, hopefully today. If you want the whole flower to be one color, make sure you buy two rolls of that color. You'll need about four hot glue sticks per flower, and a piece of greenish crepe or material to use as leaves.

I followed my crepe paper flower d.i.y. and just scaled it all up. The grain of the crepe paper should run from the center of each petal to the tip, which will help you stretch the paper beautifully once you are done assembling the flower.

Start by cutting two 14" widths of crepe paper. The grain will be perpendicular to the 14" width. Next cut two 12.5" widths, then two 11" widths, then two 9.5" widths, and so on and so forth until you have seven sets of sheets of paper, each set reduced in width by 1.5".

From the largest two sheets, cut matching petal shapes that go the full height of the paper, maintaining as much of the 14" width as you can.

From the 12.5" wide set, cut similar petal shapes the full 12.5" wide at the center, but leave off around 1 1/2" from the ends, so they are shorter than the 14" wide petals. If you are careful, you can use the lines on the paper as guides for cutting.

Reduce the length of each petal set by the same amount.

For the inner three petals, keep reducing the width and length as you have for the others, but they should be short enough now that you can fold the paper and cut a set of petals at the same time, so that they are still attached at the fold. You should have ten sets of petals total.

Open up the smallest petal set with the more finished looking side of the paper up. Apply hot glue across and around the fold as shown, sort of willy-nilly but not too far up each petal.

Be very careful to wait until the hot glue is at a temperature that is still malleable but not going to burn you, then fold the petals back together and squeeze the glued end as tight as you can.

Add glue to the second largest petals, place the first set of petals in the center on the fold in the opposite direction of the second set, and when cool enough to handle, squeeze the second set of petals up around the first.

Keep going with the rest of the petals. It helped to add a small piece of tape connecting the pairs of petals to stabilize things. Be sure to turn each set of petals perpendicular to the last, to get that rotating pattern of petals in your flower. Squeeze everything as tight as you can after each gluing.

I cut a pair of leaves out of a folded piece of mossy green paper  and glued them securely to the bottom stem area of the flower. You don't have to do this, but it looks nice.

Set the flower in a cup or vase to stabilize, then gently start stretching the edges of the crepe, starting with the outer petals. Be firm but gentle so as not to tear the paper. I trimmed off the one tear I made and you can't tell at all. Work inward, bending the outer petals way down out of your way so you can get to the ones in the center.

When all the petal edges are stretched out, flip all the petals back up, spread them out nicely, and you're done! I think that was pretty simple. Now the challenge is how to turn this into one honking fascinator! I think it would require more of a fabric headband than any type of pinning or barrette. I will make it happen, I'm sure!

One more of this guy. xoxo