Wall Pretties TUTORIAL!

Hello All,

Sorry for the mini-hiatus.  I've been distressed and depressed because of my earlier epic failure with the Halloween dress tutorial and we've been having difficulty getting our car all sorted out.  Suffice it to say, we've spent $1,000 in one week on it and there's still something wrong.  However, if I got started on the whole car fiasco, I wouldn't get to what I really want to show you today - and that's this:

Aren't they pretty?  I was trolling around on one of my favorite websites, One Pretty Thing, and I saw some amazing wallflowers created entirely out of scrapbook paper, hot glue, a bit of cardboard, and a touch of ribbon over at Blue Cricket Design.  Yup.  That's all there is to these.  Want to give it a go?

Material:
15 coordinating sheets of scrapbooking paper, size 12"x12" - really, you could get away with 8 because I ended up just using half of each sheet to make a total of 7 flowers, but I wanted variety of papers and they were on sale ;)  AND a 12"x12" sheet of yellow for the flower center
cardboard - I used a cereal box and a deli meat box (that only housed the bag of deli meat - turkey, to be precise)
hot glue and hot glue gun
some ribbon - doesn't have to be much as it is only to make a loop on the back from which to hang the pretties
scissors

To begin, I got rid of the bit of un-pretty paper that sometimes lines the bottoms of the 12"x12" papers.  Then, I folded them in half and used my countertop to rip them in half.  Just lay the fold flush against the straight edge of your counter with one half up top and the other dangling.  Grab that dangling piece and pull/rip it from the top half.  If you've never done this before, I suggest you practice first.  Or, you could use scissors if you'd like.

Then, you'll have something like this:

Now, get out something circular the size you want as the piece you'll be gluing the petals to (like a dinner plate or mixing bowl or a Slurpee cup) and trace it onto your cardboard.  Cut out this circle.  If you care what the back (that's going to be on your wall) will look like, go ahead and trace another circle the same size out of some cardstock and glue it down.  Personally, I didn't care so I didn't do this.  Make a little loop out of some ribbon and glue it down to the back of the cardboard so you can hang them on the wall later.

Now, you're going to cut out petals.  And some more petals.  And more.  And more.  And more.  You get where this is going, don't you?

For the biggest of my flowers, I initially cut two petals each from every paper because I had two large flowers to make.  After a bit of experimenting, I can tell you that you should probably only try to cut through two sheets at a time unless you don't mind touching up the edges later.  The outer perimeter of petals should be roughly the length of the cardboard center.

My intrepid assistant

After you have cut your petals, you've got two options.  #1: Glue them directly to the cardboard.  OR #2:  Do a bit of folding and gluing and then stick them on the cardboard.  If you go with #1, you will save yourself a lot of time but your petals will be all floppy.  If you go with #2, this will take longer but your petals will have dimension.  I like #2 better, but the couple times I experimented with #1, it didn't destroy my project.  Also, #1 worked best when it was a very little flower.

If you're going with #1, skip this next part and go straight to gluing the petals down.  If you're going with #2, read on.

So, #2-ers, take your petals and make a small fold on both sides at the bottom of the petal.  If you look at the picture above this, you'll see how I folded the sides in just a little.  Now, glue them down.  Do this for all of your petals.

Cradle the petals in between your index finger and thumb and give them a bit of a squeeze.  This will give them a bit of shape.  Now lay them out around your cardboard circle and decide where you want them to go and then.....glue them down!  Go around and around in concentric circles until you're at the center.  

Take out that special sheet of yellow paper and cut out a circle big enough to cover the center of the flower and the folds in the petals.  Fold that circle into 8ths and then unfold it.  Put a dab of hot glue in the center on the back and glue it down.  Cut out another circle that's smaller than the original center circle and fold that into 4ths.  Pinch the sides of the circle while folded in half and bring those pinches together.  This is like folding it into 8ths, but there won't be any crisp folds.  Put a dap of glue on the center on the back and glue it down onto the center of the previous yellow circle.

I used several petal variations in this project.  In the smallest of the flowers, the petals are heart shaped and are of the #1 (non folded and glued) variety.  The second large flower has two points per petal and there are three center circles (the largest of the 3 center circles was cut into a sunburst shape).  The three medium flowers are all different: one has finger-like petals, one has rounded tip petals, and the third has petals like a pansy.  The possibilities are endless.

I hope you give this a try.  It's time consuming, but very easy.  My total cost for this project came out to about $5 (less if you consider I only used half of each sheet of paper) and you can't beat that with a stick, as my friend Katie is fond of saying.  Send me pictures if you try it!