Craft stunning, realistic blooms from crepe paper!
Displaying paper flowers in the home is still a hot Insta-worthy trend – no wonder, since they’ll never wilt and can be enjoyed all through the year! Better still, it can be surprisingly easy to create your own blooms that are indistinguishable from the real thing, as floral guru Jessie Chui shows with these beautiful, closed ranunculus fashioned from crepe paper.
1 Cut across the grain of a fold of fine crepe paper in aubergine, merlot or burgundy, and trim it 3.8cm tall. Cut across the grain of the fold again to create two sets. Unroll each fold and cut into two shorter strips. You’ll need three strips per flower. Water-dip the aubergine or merlot strips by folding each length in half midway and rolling loosely around two fingers. With your fingers in the roll, dip one edge into warm water for two seconds, carefully unroll and hang on wooden dowels to dry.
2 If using burgundy paper, prepare the strips by bleaching. Make a solution of one part bleach to seven parts water. Fold each strip in half and roll around your fingers as before, then dip one end of the roll into the solution for two seconds. Unroll and hang to dry. Once the strips are ready, fold them in half along the grain and laminate with fusible webbing to strengthen (see Iron-On Fusible Webbing), making sure the lighter long edge on one side mirrors the lighter long edge on the other side. You should have eight 25cm laminated strips.
3 Glue a Styrofoam ball onto the looped end of an 18-gauge stem wire. Glue a 1.9cm circle of light green or black fine crepe paper onto the top of the ball so it looks like an eye [1]. The petals are divided into centre and outer petals. There are five rounds of centre petals, each serving to create a round or ball shape in the inside and middle of the flower. You will need 21-24 for the first round. Take one laminated strip and cut it in half across the grain to get two narrow strips each 1.9cm tall grain-wise; one of the strips will be slightly lighter in colour than the other due to the bleach- or water-dipping.
4 Use the two narrow strips to cut 24 petals, each 1.9cm tall grain-wise and 2.5cm wide using template A provided on the pattern pages. When cutting, have the lighter edge on the petal lip. Look at the colour details and decide which side is the outside of the flower. Turn the petal so the outer side is away from you, then cup the top half. Dart the petal base, two-thirds of the way up to create a ‘super cup’ and glue to secure the dart.
5 Apply glue to two-thirds of the inside of the petals. Attach the first
