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Hi, I'm Gloria Kenyon, Public Programs Coordinator for the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery and today
I'm joined by Libby Weiler for our Handi-hour craft. Libby, what do you do here at SAAM? I do a hodgepodge of things.
I'm a photographer. I update the website
I'm a creative person. So I like doing crafts
This is our flower wreath for May Handi-hour craft. This is just scrapbook paper in a variety of different colors.
It's really nice and stiff. So it'll really curl
This is a peony template that I printed from the internet
and so we're gonna use that as our basis you can do whatever flower you want - roses, daisies.
This is just a cardboard wreath base and you can decorate this however you want. We left it really plain for this one.
So to get started which Libby's already done a couple of her flowers already. We're just gonna trace our flower template.
This is a basic peony template and it comes with a variety of different sizes. I just went with four different sizes.
So you just trace these out. I'm just gonna do this little one on yellow.
I have one traced out. You don't want to cut it out?
Yeah, go ahead and cut yours out while I'm tracing and then I'll cut mine out.
This is just the basic method you can do to make this wreath.
For any type of flower wreath or any kind of paper,
just to get yourself started get an idea and see what you can do and you can make from it to make it your own.
What flower was this? This is a peony. And why did you decide on this flower?
I really like peonies and I really like their structure
so they're really nice and full and so I think on a wreath it looks just really
good, clean, and simple.
Which sometimes I really like simple for a project like this.
The colors I chose for the purple one here kind of reminded me of the cherry blossoms.
Not so much the blue, but this one
when it's all put together kind of reminded me of that.
Now to get these curved petals as you can see, we've got a nice little three-dimensional aspect going on there
We're going to use, this is a letter opener. You can also use a bone folder or a pair of scissors.
Libby is going to use the letter opener. I'm going to use the scissors.
We're just going to curl our petals you want to make sure where you have any pencil or marker where you traced your
template out stays on the back of the flower.
When you curve it, whichever direction your curving it, makes sure that remains on the back. I'm just going to start curling these up
What's the trick here? You take the flat of your scissors or your letter opener.
Hold it down, I call this the base where the petal cutout meets the rest of the paper
and just pull. It's like curling ribbon.
Okay, when I'm done curling it, would it help if I kind of squish it? Yeah that helps it keep its shape.
It's kind of if you ever bake and you know bread dough has elasticity, paper has elasticity, too.
Curl it up and it remembers where it's supposed to go.
I like to stack them up as I'm curling them so they stay together and kind of get to know each other.
How is that looking? It looks really good. You can actually start gluing those while I was finishing up here. So take them apart
The glue stick works really well for this.
Just take your glue and just make a little dot right in the center of your flower.
Then when you line them up,
so put it on top and then kind of adjust it so that where your petals separate, perfect. You get a nice overlap.
So you don't have any gaps or holes. You can take your wreath form and glue those on your wreath now.
I'm going to do like you did and do every other one. You can alternate and you just space them out how you want.
I space mine apart a little bit. This is the hole for the rope and you can string, Libby already strung hers,
I like to string my last you can string it before.
I like to place my leaves kind of around to help me guide where I'm going to put my flowers.
Once I placed these two flowers, I realize I need a little bit more of a leaf here.
So I just free handed my leaf shape if you're really into botany, you can make your leaves match the actual flowers.
I just made a really generic leaf shape. So I'm just going to cut those out
and glue that on to fill in my wreath.
I already have some cut out. So I'm just going to go ahead and stick them in there.
This is a really fast, fun, easy craft.
Oh, I like what you're doing there. You're putting a center in it.
Yeah, so just put us a nice center in, a nice little contrast to give it an extra pop of color.
I got this, I just fill the rest in with my different colors and my leaves and then when it's all done
Libby already strung hers, but I'll just
string my cord through. You can do a nice colored ribbon,
you can do a nice piece of cotton.
This is just a nice fiber to match the cardboard.
So there you go. And this is what a finished one looks like.
Thanks so much for joining me today Libby. Yeah. See you next time.