Paper Roses and Pumpkins

That sounds like a hipster Tumblr URL.  Anyway, finally succumbing to my über-white girl and slightly hipster nature,  I have been yearning for a flower crown for as long as I can remember.  Not the cheap puffy flower kind with the ribbons that you get when you're a little girl (thanks, Mom), but the beautiful, elaborate, expensive circlets of the modern music festival.  One that says "I'm so in touch with nature, but mine's clearly better than yours because mine was $80 and yours was like, $60."  Since I am a poor college student who doesn't have $80 to spend on a fancy flower crown (pasta and ice cream on the other hand...), I decided I would make my own.  I found this tutorial for paper roses via Pinterest, and figured why not; I'll try to make a flower crown from it.

I also figured, why only have one color rose?  So I picked a few pretty colors of cardstock to fashion into fanciful foliage.  Then I went even further.  Why only have solid color roses?  Real roses come in many different color variations and patterns.  I figured that I could probably paint some contrasting colors, so I got some watercolors as well.  I've spent so much money at Joann's that I should probably be considered part owner.  (Or at least given a sponsorship.  Joann can ya hear me?)

My haul.  Look at those tiny little easels!  Look at them!

I printed out the rose petals from the tutorial and decided to use them as a pattern on my cardstock so I wouldn't have to worry about having a back and a front and all that jazz.

I started with a really pretty pearlescent peachy pink color.

I traced the template, cut them out, and used those as an additional template to trace two roses at the same time.  Then came the curling.  The tutorial says to use a pair of scissors to curl the paper, similar to how one would curl ribbon at the end of balloons.  However, this cardstock was WAY too thick to do that.  plus, the petals were so small and close together that it was hard to maneuver even my small scissors in there.  So, I took a paintbrush and used the barrel of it that to curl the corners under.

Freshly curled flat rose petals.

I won't go into too much detail on assembly since the original tutorial did a good job of it.  I glued the tab on the bottom of piece 4, and on the top of the rest.  The wire I used wasn't strong enough to poke through the cardstock, so I took a large sewing needle and made a hole in the center of every one after I glued them into the conical shape.  I put a ring of hot glue around the bottom of the outside of the cones to attach them to the next one.

A finished rose

This particular piece of cardstock was way too thick to properly wrap around and curl and manipulate.  After an hour and a half and only finishing one rose, I decided that my flower crown would probably have to be an ongoing project.

Not wanting to go to bed tonight without finishing anything, I picked up my watercolors and decided to do some painting on those adorable little canvases.  I cut a plastic water bottle in half to use as my brush holder, since I didn't want to give up any of my plastic drinking cups.  Also, it's environmentally friendly!  Sort of.  

Note the pumpkin pi.

At the end of the day, I'm happy with what I did.  Even though I didn't get my flower crown today, that rose turned out a lot prettier than I expected it to.  I thought it would be one of those Pinterest projects that is actually really hard and one has to be really skilled to do it.  It was actually really easy, and I don't really see a lot of places where it is possible to mess it up.  Even if it doesn't come out perfect, it makes it more realistic since nothing in nature is perfect to begin with.

So that's what I did today.