Paper flower tutorial

I thought some of you would enjoy a quick tutorial on how to make those little paper flowers I used as part of my table setting a couple weeks ago. The credit for these go to Martha Stewart (I saw this idea nearly 10 years ago in her magazine, but haven't been able to find it on her website). So here I go..

Step 1: Draw a spiral on a 4x4" square sheet of paper


Step 2: Cut out spiral along lines you have drawn


Step 3: Begin rolling up the spiral from the outside


Step 4: Keep on rolling until there's no more left to roll


Step 5: You're done!


I used a slightly heavier weight paper for this one, but you can use normal paper as well. You can use squares of various sizes to have different sized flowers. Besides sticking them on branches, they would be great scattered on the table as well. Heck, you can even make a little bouquet of them. Have fun!



Note: You may use a bit of glue or double-stick tape to keep the flower from unrolling and loosening up with time. I didn't glue the ends for these specific flowers and they held up alright.

And it's open!

It's ready! Check it out!

Napkin tote

It's a good thing we have the day off today because the weekend was packed! Lots of get-togethers with friends and lots of good food. One of the events was a graduation party for a friend who recently finished design school. She had liked the placemat tote I made a while back, so I thought I'd make her a tote from a napkin I bought at the same time.



This time I decided to use interfacing and I'm so glad I did. I also used an Amy Butler fabric for the lining, and like last time, included a pocket on the inside.

Shop opening

Okay, I'm committing to an actual Etsy opening date! Next Tuesday at 1:30pm PST. I've been thinking about this for so long that it's weird to finally be doing it. Besides the pocket jotters I'll have some cards as well, but most of it won't be anything you guys haven't already seen. Thanks everyone for all the encouragement and kind words. I'm excited! And finally (although some of you have already found it!), the link to the shop!

Last set of jotters

Okiedoke, here's the last set!

More jotters

Here's the second design for these little jotters -- probably the boldest of the three designs. I'm really liking these two colors lately - reddish orange (similar to the color of the paper flowers) and yellow with just a hint of green. Actually, I've been liking most yellows that I see.. except maybe orangey-yellow.

Pocket jotters

Wow, I've really been neglecting this blog - but for good reason! I've been working hard on my Etsy shop opening the past few days and making good progress. I'm done making everything for my initial inventory and just have a few things to take care of before I go live with it all - product photos, descriptions, etc etc. I'm going to give little sneak peeks of my first collection here over the course of this week, and will soon set a date for the actual opening.

Here is the first set of pocket jotters - small, perfect-bound notebooks with original patterns for the cover.

Hosting

I'm hosting a table for a women's event at our church tomorrow, and luckily I had the day off today to prepare. I'm supposed to set and decorate a table for 8, and I wanted to try and see if I could do it without having to buy anything. I don't have a complete set of mugs or cups, so scrounged around my parents' place and found some vintage-y mugs, which I was just okay with. Instead of getting fresh flowers, I remembered a tutorial for paper flowers I learned from a Martha Stewart magazine nearly 10 years ago, so made a few and stuck them on some branches.



I wanted to add a little more color, so made these little notebooks out of some Martha Stewart paper from Michael's.



And some matching place cards inspired by the red paper flowers...



Here's how it's going to be set up tomorrow!



So all this means that I ended up with a lot less time to work on my Etsy shop opening than I had originally intended, but it was so much fun putting this together. I hope the ladies at my table like it!