Ever received a heart attack? The paper, less life-threatening type? Well, consider yourself attacked. Happy Valentine’s day. PS–“kærlighed” means “love” in Danish. PPS–wish me luck, this is my last day with long hair. Hip hip.
Crafts + holiday + Projects + valentine's day / Monday, 14 Feb 2011
Heart Attack
Design + flowers + paper / Thursday, 3 Feb 2011
oversized flowers are everywhere!
I walked into Magasin du Nord, a big department store here, and what did I see? Huge, paper, colorful flowers everwhere! In the store windows, in the make-up aisles, on the men’s sweaters tables. Ring a bell? Now, in my dreams the window dressers are regular readers of this here blog and couldn’t help but get thrilled at the idea of paper and flowers from our wedding. K, I won’t flatter myself, but Magasin, I would love to help you out on your next season’s decor. Let me know, could be fun.
DIY + paper flowers + Projects + Wedding / Tuesday, 2 Nov 2010
let me make you some giant paper flowers
100 Layer Cake featured our wedding last month and received so many comments on how to make the huge paper flowers that they asked me to do a tutorial for them, which just came out today. Thanks to my dear mother who showed me the ropes, I can now show all of you Lars readers as well. Above pics: this is Paul’s Blue Steel and the photo on right is the centerpiece on the burlap squares I painted. Speaking of, if you’d like to buy the painted burlap tablecloths I opened up an Etsy shop where you can buy them. Right now there’s only one picture, but there will be more on the way and even more products.
From the get-go, I wanted large paper flowers to create the Thumblina/Alice in Wonderland-ish effect for our garden reception. My amazing mom came up with the pattern which we then duplicated about 30 times for all the centerpieces, walkways, and stairs. The great thing about paper flowers is that we could create them with plenty of time before the wedding without worrying about the typical wilting. That said, by the wedding day we then had 30 huge paper poppies “growing” in our house so we were plenty ready to get them out! Making the flowers is as easy as pie. You’ll need a large surface to work on because these puppies are massive.
Materials:
- 7 sheets of a single color for petals. Each sheet is a single petal. We used Canson Colorline Art Papers 19″x 25″ from the local art supply store. Go local! Mom frequented (almost daily) the San Clemente Art Supply store and they would special order us the papers. So helpful! The picture of the colors below is not my preferred choices, especially for the leaves, but they don’t have Canson near my house here in Copenhagen
- 1 yellow or mustard color for stamen (middle of the flower)
- 3 sheets of different greens. We used pastel quality greens because they are less harsh.
- glue gun
- pencil
- scissors
- 18″ ruler to create the folded petal texture
- If making multiple flowers, I would suggest making a template of the petals and leaves on chipboard
1. The base of the flower is 9″ wide so you can start by marking the middle of the short end of the paper at the 9″ mark and then marking 4 1/2 inches out on either side.
2. Create the shape of the petal. You can either copy this picture and blow it up to the right size or create your own (use your creativity!).I drew it in marker here so it would be clearer, but use pencil. It’s roughly the shape of a light bulb or shell with lots of undulating waves. You don’t want them too precise, they’re flowers! From the 9″ mark on the short side of the paper draw a 5″ line up the middle.
3. Cut the shapes out.
4. Create the texture for the petal. We kept it simple by folding the paper over the ruler from the widest rim to the center of the shortest side. Space them out about every 1-1 1/2 inches. Remember not to be too precise. Then, turn the petal over and turn every other fold the opposite way like an accordian fold. It might look a little too much like a sea shell at this point, but don’t worry, it gets better.
5. Overlap one of the 5″ split sections by gluing one piece over the other, about 2-3″. This will create a cupping shape with the petal. ( I made mine with the glue coming out to make it more obvious.
6. Repeat for each of the remaining 6 sheets.
7. Assemble the flower. Take three petals and glue one on top of the other so they are evenly spread around to form the center of the flower.
8. Evenly spread the remaining four petals around the center to create the outer petals.
9. Create the stamen by drawing a 16″ circle from the yellow sheet of paper and cutting it out.
10. Create the center by drawing a 10″ circle from the black sheet of paper and cutting it out. I found a 10″ bowl to trace.
11. Cut 3″ strips around the perimeter of the black center at every 1/2″ mark or so.
12. Do the same to the yellow stamen, about 5″ strips.
13. Slightly and gently use the edge of the closed scissors to curl the cut yellow strips of the yellow stamen and the black center, much like curling ribbon for a gift.
14. Glue the yellow stamen to the center.
15. Glue black center into the yellow stamen.
16. Make the leaves. Using the 25″ as the width and the 19″ as the height, fold the edge into the center. Do the same to the other side. This will create two leaves. Use the fold as the center of each leaf and draw a half a leaf shape.
17. Cut out the shape to reveal the full leaf. Do the same to the other side.
18. Glue two leaves together. Make as many leaves are you would like. I used 5 in a few shades of pastel and deep olive greens (not the nasty greens I have pictured here.)
19. Group the leaves around the flower and glue together at the bottom. Voila!
Easy beazy right?
Again, if you’d like to buy the tablecloths I painted for the reception, go to my new Etsy site. More on the way!
Crafts + denmark + Projects / Tuesday, 26 Oct 2010
photocopies onto clay
I remembered my memory card for the workshop so all of you screaming/crying/aching for a pictures will be appeased. Today we learned how to take photocopies to transfer images onto clay. Above, Paul Scott is taking the photo off the clay and showing the final image. Kind of blew my mind.
Definitely the most lively part of the day was when he lit the copy paper on fire.
Look at the focus! He burned the paper to show how to know if the copy paper contains iron dioxide or not. Brown=yes.
Thankfully, I made a friend, Elizabeth, who let me test some on her plate. You can try images onto glazed plates like this one by first using some sort of adhesive like a glue stick or spray mount.
Because the workshop is a few hours from Copenhagen, I’m staying with some gracious friends who have been kind enough to drive me to and fro and provide me with some wonderful Danish food. This also means that it’s the first time that I’ve been away from Mr. Husband. So weird. Also weird: the mice I hear running in the ceiling of where I’m staying. eeek.
Party + Wedding / Thursday, 14 Oct 2010
banners
More wedding stuff. Sorry. This was one of my favorite parts of the wedding. Because I knew that so many beloved DC and Danish friends and family wouldn’t be able to come to the wedding in Southern California, I thought of how I could involve them. I was enchanted with the narrow streets of Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen and their quirky signage like so…
I decided to replicate it in a newer way after seeing the latest Anthropologie catalog:
I sent out a color palette and inspiration images to my friends and family along with a blank canvas banner with the instruction to go wild.
The results were phenomenal. My sister Caitlin made this one for us:
while a few friends made these below. April collaged flowers from magazines (on left), Meredith (second from left) painted the Danish flag with a flower from each place we have lived: The Canadian maple leaf (Paul’s birthplace), California poppy (my home), Danish daisy (Paul’s home and now our home) DC cherry blossoms (my home for the last four years); cousin Bryson Gill (middle) painted a lovely bridal couple on an awesome spray painted background; Cramer (second from right) painted hers while in Copenhagen and got the Scandinavian details down; Paul’s Dad (right) created a floral masterpiece which we have dubbed Jepsen Pollack. There are so many more to show but I don’t have the pictures back quite yet. I can’t wait to tell their stories.
Caitlin also made this one to lead the way to the reception site.
