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Tag: flowers

A Look Back at Teacher Appreciation Week

Published by Kathy Kaczor on July 5, 2018

Given the sheer amount of energy it took to learn to walk again after breaking my foot, I’m a little behind on the blogging for the various activities that happened between injuring myself and now. Teacher Appreciation week was at the beginning of May and here we are almost into July!

Due to the lack of ability to carry pretty much anything, I had to rely on helpers to do some of my deliveries and therefore I do not have pictures of things as delivered to the school. I do have a few pictures of the projects while they were in process at my home. Over the course of the week we delivered notebooks, pencils, mini muffins, marshmallows dipped in chocolate, tins of mints, mint chocolate cookies, and Ferrero Roche roses.

For the pencils, I stamped flags with “be the star you are” from a long retired Stampin’ Up! set. Then I glued the flags around the tops of the pencils.

I found that the Stampin’ Up! starburst punch was the perfect topper size for these metal tins. The sentiment here is from the retired Thoughtful Branches set. The tins were filled with mints and I added coordinating washi tape around the edges sealed with liquid tombow for good measure.

We have made a fair amount of these Ferrero Roche Roses for various events. They are both tasty and pretty. I found the directions and inspiration for them here.

The last project I have pictures from are the marshmallows dipped in chocolate and then in sprinkles. These were bagged up and sent along as a fun and sweet treat. Here they are freshly dipped and waiting to set so I can bag them.

 

Llama Custom Bouquet

Published by Kathy Kaczor on June 28, 2018

For Meg’s daughter’s 8th grade graduation we determined a custom llama bouquet was necessary. We found some llama themed paper and used this opportunity to try some new flowers and expand beyond the roses I’ve been making.

These swirly paper flowers looked like fun so I recreated them as best as I could. The paper I was working with was colorful on only one side and much thicker than the tissue paper used in the instructions but I think they came out cute!

Then I wanted to try the fringe scissor flowers illustrated in this video. Again though I was working with thicker paper than illustrated and without the benefit of the now discontinued “Sticky Strip” adhesive used in the video. I do have those exact fringe scissors from Stampin’ Up! though and they are very nice. Here’s my fringe flower with a center from a punch I had hanging around.

I used my Stampin’ Up! Daisy Punch to make the next flower variety. I layered the punches with dimensional adhesive and curled the petals.

At one time I had quite a few flowers sitting in various stages of waiting for the glue to dry.

Finally I mocked the bouquet in floral foam and an empty vase to see if I had enough flowers. Here you can also see the llamas I fussy cut from the paper I was using.

Finally the llama bouquet made it to its intended recipient. We used a llama water bottle as the vase and put some glass rocks inside to keep it stable and hold the flowers in place. These are easy to remove so that she can use the water bottle as intended.

 

Custom Mary Poppins Bouquet

Published by Kathy Kaczor on April 19, 2018

It is spring time in Massachusetts – not that the four Noreasters we’ve gotten this March really seem to care – but that means my daughter will be performing in her high school’s spring musical very soon. It is time then for a new custom bouquet to match the musical: Mary Poppins.

I started out with half an idea based on the popularity of the Comic Book Roses I made a few weeks ago. I found a “Little Golden Book” version of Mary Poppins and proceeded to cut out all of the pages to make flowers. I used a 3×3 square for these roses because it worked more naturally with the book page’s 6 inch width.

My husband got me all propped in bed with my foot elevated and all of my tools within easy reach and I assembled roses while we binge watched Altered Carbon on Netflix. Here is the book I began with and the finished bucket of roses waiting for the next steps:

Those next steps involved inordinate amounts of hot glue and modge podge. The cover of the book was cut into a tall rectangular handle for the bouquet. The roses were all attached to floral wire stems. Once everything was suitably dry and ready for assembly, I put floral foam into the book handle. I then poked all the flower stems into the foam. Lastly, I tied the Mary Poppins Funko Pop to the handle with ribbon and the bouquet is ready to present to my daughter this weekend!

Recycled Comic Book Roses

Recycled Comic Book Roses

Published by Kathy Kaczor on March 1, 2018

Back in college, and for a while afterwards, my husband collected comic books. He would pick up new books each week to follow the story arcs he liked. At some point this stopped and the books ended up in a box that we moved twice. The books sat forgotten until our children found them. Nothing in the box was rare or expensive so we let the kids read them – repeatedly – until their favorites stopped resembling books and started to look more like an unkempt sheaf of colorful paper.

The books ended up back in the box a lot worse for wear. I couldn’t toss them into the recycle bin though. I felt they had something else yet to do. I didn’t know what until I found this tutorial on making paper roses out of old books.

It took me until after I had made all the roses to find my toothpicks so I used a wooden skewer instead to curl the petals. This didn’t seem to impact the overall result and I am very happy with the roses.

Including the cover, I made a total of 34 roses from one issue of Superman, The Man of Steel. I added some leaves and shiny leaf-like doilies to a dozen of the roses to put in a vase for display. The rest of the roses are waiting for a proper purpose. I’d like to get some pins and turn a few into boutonnieres. I think they would be a great accessory for a super hero themed wedding!