Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Spring Blooms

Posted by: Paulette







The Pottery Barn catalog has such eye candy this season. There were several pages I dog eared on my first perusal, and then there were more ideas to take not of later. But what really caught my eye were the spring blooms scattered throughout. Originally I thought they were real and just used for the staging, but, then I realized that they were fakes, and were offered for sale. I looked at the prices and shook my head. Not in this budget. 
Then after looking at some blogs and seeing that people were making their own from tree branches, I was taken back to elementary school, and I remembered making flowers  from tissue paper. When we did it then, it was from squares, layered in an effect to look like petals on a flower. I thought I could improve upon this method.
 I cut squares of two colors of tissue paper, light yellow, and white. 
Then I folded them on the diagonal, point to point, and then again point to point on the diagonal. if you were to open them, there would be an X created by the folds.
Then I cut a heart from the folded paper. When you open the paper, it will look something like a shamrock. 
The two colored papers were layered on top of one another with a dot of hot glue in the center, then twisted at the base to resemble a bloom and hot glued to the branches. 
The buds were made by rolling the square paper (2"x2") into a to a tube and then rolling it up. then ad a dot of glue to hold it closed and glue one end to branch.
To make the branches slightly more convincing, I also cut tiny leaves and placed them sparsely along the branches. 
When I think back to my childhood, I have a memory of Mom bringing in pussy willows. I copied this look by tearing apart cotton balls, and rolling them up in my hand, and then simply hot gluing them to the branch.

Pussy willows and Plum blossoms


Since I had all of the supplies on hand this project was free for me. Now that certainly is in the budget.

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