DIY 365: Brown Paper Flowers

Fair warning, this is an image-heavy post.

In going through my crafting cabinet, I discovered a pile of brown paper. This was probably some that was crumpled up as padding in a package. It could have gone into recycling (and part of it may still - there's a lot of it), or it could become something beautiful.

From this:

to this:

I started out by gathering some circle templates. Okay, my templates were really a Danish cookie tin, a small coffee can and an empty vegetable can, but you know...

Then I traced the circles onto the brown paper.

Then I cut them out.

At first I was just going to use them as is, but the smooth edges just didn't look right to me. They didn't look "natural," so I got out my deckle edging scissors and snipped away.

The original directions I found called for folding, then rolling, then gluing folded circles onto the rolled paper, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't make it come out looking like a flower. It just looked like rolled-up paper.

I started playing around with shaping the whole pile of one size into a flower shape and realized it could work if they were attached in the middle. Out came the needle and thread and the first one was stitched together.

A word about sewing on paper. Be very, very careful. Unlike fabric, you can't sort of push the fibers back together to cover up a hole. Once you poke a hole, it's there forever. Tension can also be tricky, since if you pull too hard, you can tear the paper. Learn from my mistakes. Seriously.

After the circles were sewn together, I started scrunching up each layer.

I kept until all the layers were scrunched together.

Now, you may have figured out by now that I like options, so there are a couple of ways you could go with these. You could leave them all scrunched up, and you end up with a sort of rosebud-looking flower.

Or you could gently fold out the layers a little to get the pretty flower at the top of this post.

Another option is to attach a button in the center when you sew the circles together. Shank buttons work best, and it would be a great way to use all the odd-colored lone buttons in your button jar.

If, however, you decide to do the rosebud approach, you may wish to skip the button, since it won't be seen.

You remember I had three sizes of circles? Each circle yielded slightly different results. The two above were the smallest circle (the veggie can) and yielded flowers that fit nicely in the palm of my hand.

The middle-sized circles (the small coffee can) yielded flowers about the size of my palm.

This one incidentally also used smooth-edged circles. I got so caught up in making the flowers I forgot to deckle the edges!

The largest circle (the cookie tin) yielded a very large two-handed flower.

Of the three sizes, I think I prefer the small and medium sizes. I felt like the large size was difficult to get to look like anything other than a pile of wadded paper.

Stay tuned for what's next with these flowers!