By now, you have to know that I am entirely too into any crafty holiday that surfaces. Valentine’s Day is no different! I love any reason to let the kids create and express themselves. Our schools are so rigid in the curriculum these days, creative expression always seems to suffer. Tiny is quite the little art bug. Teeny is going to be my musician, but also loves to do anything that his big sister does. This weekend we tackled making paper roses. What fun!
Tiny and I began to practice for Valentine’s Day. We played with techniques a bit to figure out what sizes and shapes would work best with what we wanted to make. We decided to start with a large card stock heart. I like to freehand mine, but you can find a ton of templates on pinterest if you search. We decided that circles of various sizes gave us the look we were going for. Once you have your heart cut out, lay it flat and use it as a guide to determine what sizes and how many total roses to make. We made two large roses, two medium roses, and five small roses. We chose to use different colors of card stock, though scrapbook paper, colored paper or any other medium weight paper would work.
The flowers couldn’t be easier to make. Start with a circle in the size you desire. I used 3 inch for small, 4 inch for medium, and 5 inch for large. Simply begin to cut at the very edge and cut in a spiral (I made my cuts at about 1 inch in width) until you get to the very center.
Once you have your spiral, begin at the center of the spiral and begin to curl the paper in on itself so that you are rolling the paper around the core, creating a 3D flower.
You could also use ovals, depending on the look you are going for. Ovals will produce a flower that is higher on one side than the other. I found them really interesting, and could use them for future projects, but really liked the relatively uniform height of the circles.
I added a drop of white glue to the outside edge to secure it and smeared it a bit with my finger to seal the edge. You could use the sealant of your choice – hot glue is preferred by some, but I found that regular, run of the mill white glue was just fine for this purpose. Hold the edge to the flower to ensure a good bond, then let dry.
We decided that we wanted a little something special to add some detail to our roses. While we typically would opt for anything glitter, we decided to use white pearl-like beads to grace the center of each of our roses. I’m so glad we went with understated, it was the most perfect, sweetest little addition to our roses. Affix by adding a drop of glue to the center of each rose and adding the bead – let dry.
Before you secure your flowers to the heart, consider any wording, if any you want to include. We were making a Valentine for Tiny’s grandmother, so we wrote the word “Love” in the center. We layed out our flowers and arranged them on the heart to get the desired effect, and then glued them to the base.
The entire project took less than one hour, so it went pretty fast. The slowest part is waiting for the glue to dry before you move it. Teeny wanted to get his little paws on them so bad he couldn’t stand it, so between Teeny using his ninja skills to sneak over to the kitchen table where beautiful roses were drying and Tiny having a fit every time she saw him on the move, it felt like forever. Finally, the flowers were dry and able to be moved before the coming flower-pocalypse could occur.
I can’t wait to make a couple more of these for Papa Bear and their other grandmother.
