Pretty Paper Floral Lanterns

As you may know we are huge fans of Kelly over at Studio DIY! {Check out our super fun interview with her here} We had the opportunity to guest post for her at Christmas time and were so excited to have had another chance a few weeks ago. With summer in full bloom outdoor entertaining is a must! Who does not love dining and parting al fresco when its warm and beautiful! But, just like partying indoors you need to party in style outdoors too! We love paper lanterns they are so versatile and come in so many different colors and sizes! Although, they are already so festive and fun, we thought why not add some 'pretty' to them too! And, yes paper flowers can make anything prettier...right!?! So we created a DIY on making mini paper lanterns adorned with simple tissue paper flowers. They can be hung from tree branches so they are all different heights, which gives a lot of dimension and adds a lot of color! You could also put them over a string of lights and create a beautiful garland {with lit lanterns} this would make a great addition to any night time party! It would also be beautiful to use all different sized lanterns if you were looking to do these on a grander scheme...pretty outdoor wedding maybe? Check out our full DIY here! And then stay a while and check out all of Kelly's amazing ideas and too!

Oh Hello Spring!

After an incredibly long winter, that seems to be lingering, we were so excited to see a glimpse of spring today as the daffodils were beginning to break through the ground in the garden. Beautiful blooms are always one of our favorite signs of spring...now all we need is the sunshine and a warm spring breeze. As we wait patiently for the 'real' flowers were are always inspired by paper ones. Although they don't smell as lovely as 'real' ones, using a pretty spring color palette you can make paper ones that will hold your attention until the real ones bloom. If you follow us regularly, you know that paper flowers are a favorite DIY of ours. We wanted to create something reminiscent of spring. We simply used a Styrofoam wreath and wrapped it with a  pretty green satin ribbon and formed a cluster of colorful paper flowers on the side. This wreath would make a beautiful hostess gift for Easter. Thank you for letting us share with you and we are really looking forward to next week when we start blogging full time again!

You can find our DIY to creating these lovely flowers here....

DIY Paper Floral Crown

Having twins, it is near impossible to get a photo of both of the girls smiling or even looking at the camera. So, I have learned to be very candid in taking photos of them. This year, it was my goal to get a photo {with both girls in it} that we could use for our holiday cards. Of course, I knew I was going to do a frosted photo card. We love doing frosted photo items when there is a perfect little detail to glitter, like a bow, a ruffle or something in a little girl's hair. We love making and using paper flowers, and we had made a ton of them over the holidays to adorn our packages with. So, with my frosted photo card in mind, we decided to create a paper flower floral crown for my girls to wear in their holiday photos. We were actually thrilled with the way it turned out and decided to share the DIY with you, because not only does it make a lovely photo prop but these would be darling on flower girls for a wedding or a beautiful take home gift to give after a princess or tea party! The DIY is really fairly simple and use could use a variety to colors to coordinate with your child's clothing or theme.

Materials 

Card stock of your choice

Scissors
Hot glue
Mini ornaments
Eye lash yarn {Martha Stewart makes a great one}
Plain ribbon wrapped headband {Can be found at your local craft store, or you can use a plastic one and wrap ribbon color of your choice around it}

To create the flowers, follow our easy tutorial here

For this particular crown, we used a larger flower and two slightly smaller flowers. 

Simply glue the completed flowers on your headband. When you glue them try to angle them slightly toward 

the front. They look pretty if they are framing the child's face. 

{wish garland from here}

DIY paper flowers for your holiday packages

We have to admit there is something about a beautifully wrapped gift! It just makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside! We love to adorn our gifts with something special to help create simple yet beautiful presentation. One of the easiest ways to do this is with paper flowers! They are so easy and can be created to compliment any wrapping paper or theme. We created these paper flowers with a holiday theme in mind.
By hot gluing them to a clothes pin you can reuse them over and over! We were so excited to have these featured on Studio DIY a couple of weeks ago! We hope you will give theem a try, happy wrapping!

Materials 

Card stock of your choice

Scissors
Hot glue
Mini ornaments
Eye lash yarn {Martha Stewart makes a great one}
Optional clothes pins

Take a piece of white paper and draw the shape of the petal you desire, it should be not bigger than 1 ½”. Be sure to have a rectangle shape at the bottom, this is important for creating the flower shape. Cut it out and use this as your pattern

Take your card stock and cut it into 2”x2” squares

Take your pattern and lay it on top of 2-3 squares of your cut out card stock and cut out, you can create 

2-3 petals at a time depending on the thickness of your card stock

You will need 7 petals for each flower 

Where you have your rectangle at the bottom cut a slit a few centimeters up

Cross one side of the slit paper over the other and hot glue it to hold it in place, this will give the petal shape and dimension

Cut a small 1” circle out of your card stock, or you can use a paper punch

Start to glue the bottoms of the flowers around the circumference of the circle. You will need about 4 petals. The last 3 petals can be stacked on top. As you glue the petals on fold them backward to give the flower some dimension

After your petals are all on securely, take one of your ornaments and some length of your eyelash yarn to create a center for the flower. Put a dab of hot glue on the bottom of your ornament and attached one end of the yarn

Wrap the yarn around until you reach the end and secure it again with another dab of hot glue.

Hot glue the entire bottom of the ornament and place it into the center of the flower

You can now add a clothes pin on the back of the flower, so that it can be attached to a gift or gift bag. You could even put a magnet on the back of the clothes pin! Since the flowers are being pinned onto a gift they can be reused as many times as you like! 

Spring Flower Magnets

We thought we would share a fun little diy with you today! We love this project because it is super easy and perfect for spring! These little paper flower magnets would even be so cute to pop in an Easter basket or a fun little gift to give for Mother's Day!

All you need is:

blank magnets {that you can find at any craft store}

paper of your choice to create flowers and green paper for leaves

gems

circle paper punch

scissors

glue gun

We choose to use textured pink paper and white, glittered paper to make the flowers and green on green polka dot paper for the leaves. Cut 4 leaf shapes out of your green paper and punch out one pink circle as the base for each flower. Turn the magnet over and take off the paper peel to reveal the sticky side and stick the corner of the leaf and the base of the flower to it {if you can not find pre-sticky magnets just use hot glue}. For each flower we punched {excluding the base} 4 pink and 2 white circle. You can arrange them any way you wish. One at a time you are going to glue them together, add a small dab of glue in the center on the top of the first circle and glue the bottom of the next circle on top {make sure not to cover the entire circle in glue just the center} and repeat until you have all of your circles stacked. Once you have them stacked you can cut where the scallops are from the edge to the center making sure the stop in the center and not to cut all the way through {see photo}. The gently pull up the layers to create a dimensional flower and add a gem in the center. Simply glue the flower to the base and you are done!

DIY Oversized Paper Flowers

We were so thankful to have our "creme and gold baby shower" featured on Amy Atlas! Since we posted it we have had a lot of inquires about the oversized paper flowers we made as a back drop! Well, we can't take full credit for them our sweet and lovely friend Katie showed us how to make them! You may remember the gorgeous flowers she made for her sisters wedding. Anyways, we are excited to show you how to make them and hope you will try them for your next party!

Materials
1. Paper of your choice
2. Tissue paper {color of your choice}
3. Floral wire
4. Hot glue
5. Scissors
6. Small circle of card stock
Print and cut petal pattern, trace petals and cut out. {Find floral tempate here}
After cutting out your petals, accordion fold them. and cut small slit from the bottom. At this point if you want to spray paint your flowers you can do so now. When they are dry, cross one side of the paper over the other and hot glue to hold into place, this will give your petal shape and dimension.

Cut a small slit at in the middle of the bottom of the flower, cross one side of the paper over the other and hot glue to hold into place, this will give your petal shape and dimension.
Cut a small circle out of card stock to glue the petals onto. Glue the petals onto the card stock, overlapping the slightly. Once you have 4 petals glued on the bottom, repeat with the remaining 3 on top, overlapping again so that they are staggered from the bottom layer.

Cut 6 pieces of layered tissue paper into a 3” circle. Stack the tissue paper on top of each other and push the wire through about an ½ inch apart and twist at that bottom. Be careful not to rip the tissue, you may also want to put a dab of hot glue on top just to secure it. Start bunching the tissue one layer at a time to create a flower, you may want to add a dab of hot glue before you bunch the first one to hold the wire to the tissue.

Hot glue the tissue paper flower into the larger flower and you are done!

DIY tissue paper and fringe cupcake toppers

We are working on a really beautiful gold and creme themed baby shower that will take place this weekend. We are really excited to see how it all comes together. One of the diy projects we are working on is a creme colored tissue paper flower with a gold fringe center! We obviously love making paper flowers, and these are so easy to make and look so pretty on top of your cupcakes!

Materials:

tissue paper

gold fabric or ribbon

lollipop sticks

hot glue

scissors

hole punch

We are topping mini cupcakes, so we cut mini circles our of our tissue paper, about 2". If you are making them for regular sized cupcakes you can cut your circles larger. Just layer your tissue paper and cut out circles...don't worry about them being perfect, the more imperfect you cut cut the more shapely the flower. You are going to use about 6 circles per cupcake topper. Punch a hole in the center of the layered tissue paper.
Cut a 1" strip of your gold ribbon or fabric {we found a spool of this thick gold ribbon in the dollar bin at Jo Anne Fabrics}. Roll the ribbon and hot glue the bottom of it together. Then just cut strips taking care you don't cut all the way to the bottom, you just want to create a fringed look.
Next add a dab of hot glue to the top of your lollipop stick and slide your 6 layers of tissue paper on. {Exactly like our diy ombre flower cupcake toppers} Then add another dab of glue in the center of your flower and add your fringe piece. Immediately close the top layer of tissue around the fringe so that it attaches. Then just continue to bunch your tissue paper layer by layer.
It's that simple! Hope you will try these, they would look beautiful in any color...especially with spring approaching!!