Saturday, October 1, 2011

Wallflowers

Everyone who visits my office is greeted with a smile and a burst of color from my "paper garden". When I first got here I decided the office needed more spice but wasn't sure how to go about it. Using things around the office, I ended up making giant magazine flowers to hang up for that extra dose of fun. Many people have asked me how I made them so I figured I would explain it!
The "wallflowers."

You will need: (I substituted with things on hand)

A magazine
scissors 
ruler/any straight edge (I used a 3-hole punch)
cardstock (An old file folder worked perfectly)
ribbon
staples/tape/adhesive of your choice. 

1. Cut the pages of your magazine to a perfect square. I wasn't very choosy about the pages I used. Because I'm lazy, I folded the top corner into the spine to create the square. 



2. Use a straight edge (I used a 3 hole punch) to tear the bottom of the square. I find the cleanest rips were when I pulled up from the corner and ripped from the spine and the bottom at the same time, done rather quickly. You can make the squares any size, as long as they are squares. You will need 11-12 squares depending on the size of your flower. 


3. Roll the corners of your squares in to make a cone. Staple the ends shut. Repeat with all squares.

4. Out of your cardstock (or old colorful file folder) cut a circle large enough to cover up to the half way point of the cones all the way around. Any bigger than half and the circle might show through. I just eye-balled it. Staple the cones around the circle. I also taped the inside of the cones down in the center. 



5. Add the finishing touches! I cut a smaller circle to cover the center where I taped the cone points down. My supervisor had lots of ribbon and stickers from awareness events in the past so I stapled a large ribbon down the center as a stem and attached a small leaf cut from the same file as the circles. I added some stickers to the center of the circle for texture and fun.

The neat thing about these is that you can make them any size from teeny-tiny to humongous and because everything is attached to the circle in the back they're very easy to hang. I used one tack up at the top of the circle. You can't see it between the cones. I'm sure you could use sticky tack too.

Have fun! I'm thinking I need to change these out now that Summer is over (sigh)... Anyone have an ideas for Autumn decorations?