Guest Designer - Paper Flower Bouquet - by Miwa

Hi, cropchocolate.com folks! I was really excited to get my assignment of making an Easter project, because it's always fun to incorporate flowers and pastels into the mix. The only thing that could make it better was to add some chocolate - so I did! 

 

CC Materials: 

EP Grab-bag (utilized Summer Days, Springtime, Splash, and Playground)

Eggcellent stamps by Jillibean

American Crafts buttons (pastel)

QK License Plate 4x8 alphabet

MME Lime Twist twine

 

Tools used: QK flower die, tissue paper, glass cup (Crate & Barrel), wooden bbq skewers, chocolate eggs (yum!), lots of glue dots

 

I found a good-sized glass cup at Crate & Barrel and filled it with chocolate eggs (to support the skewers). In order to obscure the skewers from view, I covered the lower portion of the jar with tissue and tied some pink twine around it. You can decorate the glass with anything you like, but I thought ornaments from Scrappy Canuck's blog (http://scrappycanuck.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/its-wintertime/) would make very pretty "flower" trees and contrast very nicely against some iris-folded flowers. I topped off the display with a "Happy Easter" sign and sprinkled a few "chick-in-the-egg" images from the Jillibean Eggcellent stamps (the 3-dimensional look was created by adding foam tape behind the eggs). 

 

But how do you iris fold? Check out my tutorial to see how easy it is to create a distinctive look on your crafting projects! In a nutshell, you follow a strict pattern (structured by number and color) and lay down strips of color-coordinated paper to form an "iris". One of my favorite iris-folding websites is http://www.circleofcrafters.com/irisfolding/, where you can find tons of free patterns - just resize the image to the appropriate size. 

 

Happy iris-folding!