Crepe Paper Magnolias

Aren't they beautiful?!

 

And honestly, you can't even tell they aren't the real thing - now how awesome is that?

 

We (I say we, but it was really me) had a need for inexpensive magnolias to incorporate into our centerpieces for the Belles and Beaus Ball last month and even on sale or using coupons, silk flowers were out of our budget.  Unfortunately for her Luckily, my good friend and partner-in-crime Kristi found a paper magnolia tutorial on Martha Stewart crafts that you can watch here.  And once I saw it, I knew that no other flower options would do for my 'Old South' themed soiree!

 

 

Finding the crepe paper was a bit of a challenge so I will save you the trouble of driving to all of your local craft stores, paper/scrapbook stores and florists because they just don't have it - okay?!  Go ahead and head on over to eBay where the lovely Michael from Italian Paper People will hook you up for a very reasonable price and with some free shipping too!

 

 

And you are going to love, love, love this paper!  It was so easy to work with and I can't wait to try it on some other projects!

 

Anyway, it comes on 8' rolls that are approximately 20" wide, so we had to do a lil' cipherin' to figure out how many flowers we would be able to squeeze out of our paper rolls for the tables.  We needed about 100 flowers to cover everything and we ended up using 4 rolls, including 3 rolls for petals and one partial roll for the flower centers.  We were also on a time table, so ordering more paper in advance of the dance wasn't an option.  Fortunately, with just a few modifications from the original tutorial, we were able to get the job done with magnolias to spare!

 

 

Martha's Modified Magnolia Tutorial

Supplies:

• Italian crepe paper in yellow and creme,white or pink
• Template for petals and stamens
• 6" wired floral picks (Michael's)
• Brown or green floral tape
• Scissors
• Scotch tape

Instructions: 

1. Watch Martha's tutorial a couple of times.
2. Don't freak out and look somewhere else - this is the best paper magnolia out there!
3. Skip bleaching your paper and just buy the color you want.  Down here in Texas, I'd never seen pink magnolia blossoms before anyhoo!
4. Use your rotary cutter and mat to make quick work of cutting your petals.  I was able to cut through about three thicknesses easily using these tools.
5. Since I wasn't bleaching, I found that I was able to get a 5" petal out of a strip that was only 1.5" rather than 2", which gave me some extra paper for more petals.  Also, this paper is very forgiving, so a little less was no problem, especially for the smaller petalled flowers (see below).
6. Don't be afraid to make flowers of different sizes.  I modified the 5" petal template to a 4" petal template so we were able to make more flowers with less paper.  We ended up with a mix of both 5" and 4" petalled flowers on our tables - beautiful!
7. A tiny piece of scotch tape will hold your rolled paper stamen together while you add your petals so you can save your wire to wrap around the petals and stamen, securing them together.
8. Nine petals seemed to look just a good as 12, which also meant more flowers and less to fiddle with trying to hold all together until you can get it wired.
9. Floral tape is pretty inexpensive, so don't use it sparingly on these flowers.  It's a little tricky to get the hang of, but you will!
10. We found that cutting and stretching lots of petals first, then assembling the flowers really sped up the process and I was able to enlist the help of my Brownie scout for this part, which is always more fun!

 

In addition to being beautiful, these crepe paper flowers were very durable as well and we ended up with most of them intact at the end of a very fun-filled evening!  All in all, they ended up costing us about 50 cents each, so it was well worth the effort!

 

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