Hi
and educator working here in Toronto.
I make all kinds of things:
drawings, prints, ceramics, murals.
Back in March of 2020, when we were first
stuck at home, I started making paper flowers
to brighten up our apartment.
I really love those first few weeks of spring when
the blooms are starting to appear everywhere.
And it feels kind of fresh and hopeful all of a sudden.
So I hope that this project can bring a little
bit of that feeling into your home as well.
These flowers are really fun to make.
They're very simple.
But if you get into it, you can make them
as intricate as you like.
When you're done, you can bind them together into
a bouquet to give to someone you love
or just leave them as they are.
And maybe if I'm making my flowers over here
and you're making your flowers out there,
it's just a little bit like we're working
on one giant art project together.
♪ [electronic]
♪ ♪
So are you ready?
Let's do it.
To make your paper flowers
you're going to need a piece of cardboard,
I got this one from an old cereal box.
Some tissue paper,
You'll need at least four pieces of tissue paper for
each flower, measuring at least 20 centimetres
on either side.
A brush and a set of watercolour paints,
scissors, a roll of masking tape,
a pencil and some twist-ties.
And don't forget the water for your watercolour paints.
You'll also need something to trace a circle on your
tissue paper that's around 18 or 19 centimetres across.
So I'm going to be using this Tupperware container.
The first thing you're going to do is trace
a circle on your tissue paper.
So I like to work with a stack of four pieces of
tissue paper so that I don't have
to repeat this step on every page.
♪ ♪
Once I have my circle drawn on there, I'm going
to just take the tissue paper together
at the edges so it doesn't move while
I'm cutting out my different layers.
♪ ♪
So in my circle that I trace, I'm going to draw
a five petal flower shape.
You can either draw it
with rounded petals like this or you can draw it
with pointed petals like this.
And if you go with rounded petals, you'll end up with
a rounded flower like so.
And if you go with pointed petals, your flower is
going to be more pointed.
So once I've chosen my shape, I'm just going
to sketch it into the centre of this circle.
♪ ♪
And this definitely does not have to be perfect,
but I do want it to be vaguely flower like with five petals.
And I'm going to cut out that flower shape
that I traced and I've taped my tissue paper together.
So it's easy for me to cut up all four pieces of
tissue paper at once.
♪ ♪
Ta-da! Here we go.
So I now have four flower stapes to work with.
♪ ♪
Now that I have my four flower shapes, I can think
about adding in my colour, this is really the fun part.
So if you'd like, you can take a little walk around
your neighbourhood and get some inspiration from what
flowers might be starting to appear.
If it's early in spring, you might see daffodils,
irises, the magnolia trees might start going soon,
crocuses.
Just see what you can find.
I think I'll work mostly with
this really nice scarlety
red colour here and with my yellow as well.
If you take a close look at the petals of flowers,
you'll find there's often sort of a gradation
happening where they'll be darker in the centre
or darker at the edges.
But you'll see the colour shift and change from
the middle out to the edge of the flowers.
So I'm going to put my really intense crimson colour
right in the centre here and kind of brush it out
towards the edges of the petals.
Of these four flower shapes that I have,
I'm going to paint three of them like flower petals,
and I'm going to use the fourth for leaves.
So I'll leave that one and paint it green at the end.
Part of the beauty of these flowers is that
the impression of all of the overlapping petals will
give it this beautiful dimension and complexity.
So you don't have to make each petal perfect.
They're all going to work together to make this
really harmonious whole.
And I'm going to fade the pink into the yellow
by just overlapping it.
Get some nice orange colours here.
♪ ♪
So now that I've got a layer of colour on my petals,
I'm going to paint my leaf layer.
♪ ♪
Any flower that you see, if you examine it closely,
will probably have some patterning and some
variation in its petals beyond just a solid colour.
So I'm going to take a contrasting colour.
It's actually that same red colour that I was using before,
but I'm going to use it quite a lot darker
so that you can see it against the other colours.
And I'm going to start adding some fine lines
and some markings to my petals.
♪ ♪
So I try to change the pressure on my brush
so I get some thicker parts of the line and some thinner
parts of the line, and I sort of stagger the lines
so they don't all end at the same point.
♪ ♪
The centre of the pedal shapes is going to be kind
of hidden once we've found them together
into the flower.
So you don't need to concern yourself with
what's happening right in the middle.
It's not going to be visible in the final product.
♪ ♪
So once my paddle shapes are dry, after about five
or 10 minutes, I should be able to lift them very
gently off the cardboard.
To assemble our flowers
we're going to take those three petal shapes
and just arrange them on top of one another.
I want to try to alternate the pedals so that you can
see the different shapes peeking through, and then
we'll put those three on top of our leaf shape.
Okay, and here is the tricky part.
We're going to take these flat paper shapes
and turn them into a flower.
Going to get myself a couple
strips of masking tape.
♪ ♪
I'm also going to get my twist tie handy, this will
help make the stem of my flower flexible so that
I can attach it to other flowers if I want to make
an arrangement at the end.
So I'm going to take my pencil and I'm going
to press down on the centre of this petal
arrangement that I've made.
My other hand, I'm going to pick up the flowers
from underneath and squeeze everything
together around the pencil.
You can see the bottom of the pencil
pressing through there.
I'm just going to kind of squeeze and press
everything together until it feels like it's coming
together as one piece.
You may have to twist it a little at the bottom.
It's not going to hold together on its own,
but it should have a feeling that it's becoming one
sort of sturdy flower like you see.
♪ ♪
Once I feel like I've got everything
pressed into shape around the pencil,
I'm going to pull my pencil out.
♪ ♪
And just hold that little stem nubbin' with my finger.
Get my piece of tape,
what I want to do with my tape is just wrap around
this little nubbin' that's sticking out,
on a diagonal to start to form a stem shape.
♪ ♪
Then I'm going to take my twist tie, and I just want
to affix it to the stem that I've just made.
♪ ♪
So I've got my flower shape here at the top,
it's already looking pretty cool, but this is the part
where you get to kind of style your flower.
So just start pulling at the petals and the leaf shapes
until you get an arrangement that you're happy with.
♪ ♪
That's pretty.
So to make your bouquet of flowers, you can just
repeat this process a few times until you have
a variety of flowers that you like.
These are both made with that round petal shape.
♪ ♪
Here's one that I made with that more pointed
petal shape, so it's just the exact same pedal shape,
but ending in a point instead of a rounded edge.
♪ ♪
And you can arrange them into a little bouquet.
♪ ♪
You can find yourself a small cup or pot to display them in.
Just bend the stems of the flowers so that they fit
in the depths of your chosen vessel.
♪ ♪
Now your flowers are ready to display.
♪ ♪
And I love the variety of colours here,
seeing those contrasting colours play off of each other.
♪ ♪
Look at these awesome flowers.
Thank you so much for following along with me,
and I hope you also get a chance to slow down
and appreciate some of those beautiful spring blooms
that are appearing in our streets
and neighbourhoods right now.
I would love to see your work, so please share
a photo and tag me and @CBCARTS as well.
I can't wait to see what you make.