How to make paper flowers for a spring party

The Pea celebrated her 11th birthday last weekend with a movie night and sleepover for 7 of her school friends. We decided to decorate her birthday table in Easter-themed pink, yellow and green. The table looked gorgeous, but the wall behind it was plain and bare. Usually I put up a "Happy Birthday" banner or poster, but this year I wanted to do something different, so I decorated the ceiling instead, and hung paper lanterns and flowers at various lengths. Here's how I made the paper flowers:


1) Fold a piece of construction paper, 8"x12", into 8 accordion-style folds. This will make a flower about 12" in diameter, but you can experiment with different sizes of paper and a different number of folds.


2) Fold in half. Repeat with 2 or 3 more pieces of 8"x12" construction paper.


3) Snip the ends of the paper into triangle points.


4) Tape the center folds together to form a fan. Tape 3 or 4 of these fans (I used 3) together to form a circle.


5) Punch a hole in the flower and thread a ribbon through it. Make sure the ribbon for each element is a different length so each one hangs at a different height. Attach to the ceiling with painter's tape. The flowers are done at this point, but I thought the blue painter's tape looked ugly, so I decided to cover it.


6) To cover the blue tape, cut a circle (about 6" diameter) from construction paper. Cut a single straight slit in the circle, to the middle.


7) Double-fold painter's tape on one side of the circle.


8) Center the circle over the ribbon, covering the blue tape, and press into place.




And there you have it, a beautiful spring-themed ceiling arrangement!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i had a great time making lots of this way back then. thanks for posting.