Paper in Bloom

Admittedly, I'm not great at tending to real flowers; my green thumb is more of a black thumb, unfortunately. Paper flowers, on the other hand, I can easily preserve. There's no danger of overwatering or underwatering them, or exposing them to too much or too little sunlight. Really, the only maintenance required is protecting them from a strong gust of wind from an open window. 

At first, I had no idea how to make realistic-looking flowers out of paper, until I found the following YouTube video:

My first step was to figure out how to display these flowers. I eventually decided on a garden planter using the bottom of a Q-tip box, cotton stuffing, and some confetti I made from green construction paper.

Next, after re-watching the YouTube video a few times and experimenting with different measurements, I miniaturized 2 of the 10 flower designs so they would fit inside the planter.

For Flower #5, I cut a 1.5 x 14.5 cm strip of purple construction paper for the petals and a 0.5 x 29 cm strip of pink paper for the pistil.   

For Flower #6, I used a 7.5 x 7.5 cm square of red construction paper.

The third flower type was designed by your truly. Using a roll of Scotch tape, I traced 5 circles, each with a diameter of 2.5 cm, onto a sheet of white construction paper. Then I made a 1.0 cm circle using a steel washer traced onto yellow paper. Next, I folded each circle in half twice to create a wedge-shaped petal. Finally, I joined the petals together and attached the pistil to the center, with a glue stick and tacky glue, respectively.

Making these flowers was not easy, especially for the perfectionist in me who kept saying about the first 2 designs, "But they don't look nearly as good as the ones in the video!" While that may be true, I reminded myself that this was my first time making paper flowers, and in light of that, perhaps I should cut myself a little slack. 

Besides, there are other materials I can make flowers out of that are perhaps more forgiving to my hands. Stay tuned!