Crepe Paper Flowers

Recently, February 18th to be exact, I got married! I decided pretty early on that I wanted to keep everything simple. So, of course I decided to make most of the décor; the bouquets, the boutonnieres, and the centre pieces.

While never being a huge fan of flowers, despite working in a flower shop, I still wanted to have the traditional bouquets and boutonnieres but made out of something a little different. I scoured the internet looking for ideas. I found bouquets of brooches, of felt flowers and of flowers made from panty hose stretched over wire, but none of them really appealed to me until I saw flowers made out of tissue and crepe paper. Practically all were found on the Martha Stewart Weddings website where I immediately discovered the perfect design was the Tissue Bubble Flower. I altered it to crepe paper instead of tissue because I wanted it to be less delicate.

Crepe Bubble Flowers

Materials: 

Crepe paper

Floral wire

Floral tape

Thin cotton yarn or artificial stamens

White glue

Tools:

Scissors

Needle nose pliers

Golf ball or other spherical object

Making the Petals

The size of your spherical object determines your petal size. Measure the circumference of your object. Create a cardstock template using that measurement for the length and slightly less than half for the width. For instance I used a golf ball that is 5½” making my width 2½”. This accommodates the stretch of the crepe paper as you shape the petals around the spherical object.

Next cut out 5 pieces of crepe paper per flower with the grain running lengthwise.

Centre the golf ball in the piece of crepe paper and pull paper up the sides of the golf ball slightly stretching it into shape. Then twist up the long ends one at a time much like you would twist up a candy wrapper, but making sure you twist it all the way to the end.

Once both ends are twisted carefully remove the sphere and put a dab of white glue at the base of each twist. This will hold the twist and the shape of the petal once assembled.

Repeat the above steps four more times, you will need 5 petals in total for each flower, and set them aside in a safe place for the glue to dry.

Making the Stems

I made my stamen using 2” lengths of yellow cotton yarn. I needed six lengths that I would divide into pairs and tie small knots into either end. You can use anything that you have on hand like yellow tissue paper or ribbon, let your imagination be your guide.

Cut a length of floral wire the desired length, I cut mine to 10”, and wrap with floral tape. This base of tape helps later on when assembling.

Fold over ½” about 120o from one end of the wire, centre the stamen in the fold and pinch the wire around the stamen. Fold the stamen up and tape around the base to hold them in place.

 Assembling the Flower

Position the first petal with the stamen centered in the petal and secure with floral tape.

Position the second petal so that it is hugging the first petal, so roughly half of the first petal is covered by the second and secure with floral tape.

Continue adding the petals in the same way. The last petal will be over the fourth and under the first. Now that all the petals are in place wrap the base of the flower with floral tape several times to make sure that the petals stay in place.

Clip off the twists at the tops of the petals and gently pull and twist the petals to open the flower.

Voila!