How Tuesday: Upcycled Paper Boquet

This week’s How Tuesday comes to you from Cara over at This Little Light. As soon as I saw it I became completely obsessed. I literally thought about making my own paper flower bouquet until I got off work and could run home and find some paper. Here’s how mine came out:

Swoon!

View Full Tutorial Here

Here’s the rundown on how I put my own spin on her concept and made it fit my space:

At first I thought about making a black and white bouquet out of sheet music, and looked into downloading our wedding song to print and use. But that would cost some dollahs, so next I thought of using vintage books, which I have plenty of. While going through my shelves I came across an old edition of Boho Magazine. Boho is printed on a heavy-gauge recycled paper, and the color scheme for this edition was beautiful grey-scale, yet saturated, colors. Perfect! And free!!!

The flowers didn’t take long to make and glue. I’d say about two hours, or thee episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. I didn’t have the finger-cramping trouble that Cara did; I think it’s because I used my table to push against while rolling the flowers instead of holding them between my hands. I also got up frequently to check on dinner, so my fingers got a break.

The next day it took about another two hours to get all the flowers glued to their stems, leaves attached, and arranged just so. I wanted a taller centerpiece than the vases I had could support, so I picked this one up at the thrift for 99¢. The best part was they had an identical one next to it, scratched up, for $5.99. Win!

I splurged a little and bought thick gauge paper-wrapped florist’s wire. It’s almost twice as much as regular skinny plain wire, but (in my humble opinion) sooooo worth it. I think it takes my bouquet from crafty to Anthropologie.

The filler is five shredded pages from an old edition of Found Magazine. I wanted a black & white base to compliment, but not take away from, the pops color going on above. Upcycling going on all around, you gotta love it.

I cut my flowers in a more-or-less straight spiral instead of wavy; I wanted a cleaner look since my paper was full of print. The leaves are scrapbook paper I bought – most of them are an iridescent white, with lightly textured soft pink or green leaves to bring out Boho’s main color scheme. I did at least one leaf on each flower, predominantly using white, but put two on some that could take the extra visual heft.

Each flower is totally unique with a different inside and outside, and I love each and every one. But my favorites are the ones that only had black on white text, with pops of highlighted words in color.

Four hours, one hot glue gun burn, 30 paper blossoms, and $14.23 later I have a centerpiece that I’m even more obsessed with than I was when I saw the tutorial. Everything except the stems and the leaves are upcycled or secondhand – which I totally love – and it’s a showstopper, if I say so myself. You can see it as soon as you come in my front door, and everyone who has come over has commented on it. I can totally see these in smaller box vases, clustered tightly, as a centerpiece for a wedding or other chic DIY event.

A huge thanks to Cara for sharing this tutorial! This definitely will not be the last time I play with paper flowers.

What would be your dream color scheme for a flower boquet? Plain or printed? Multi-colored or mono?

Tags: Anthropologie, centerpiece, DIY, Do it yourself, Flower, Flower bouquet, Home Decor. decor, How Tuesday, Paper, Paper art, recycled, Tutorial, upcycled