Before and Crafterwards: Fête des mères

In France Mother's Day is on the 31st of May this year, so I'm sharing a Fête des mères craft today.

Here's what I made; a colourful pot of crepe paper tulips:

Tulips are my favourite flower and very colourful. You can make these flowers in any colour you want!

I found the idea for the flowers on Youtube here and then decided to also paint my own pot to put them in.

The instructions on Youtube are all in inches, in France it's not easy to get your hands on a ruler with inches so in my explanation below I've used cm.

First, here's what you'll need for the flowers and leaves:

Crepe paper in different colours (including green for the stems and leaves), scrap paper or newspaper, a glue stick, sticky tape, thread, scissors, a pencil and a ruler.

In the video they use newspaper which gives longer, thinner stems. I didn't have any newspaper available so used scrap paper (a great way of not wasting paper) and it worked just fine for my purposes and made nice strong stems.

To prepare the stems:

Roll up the paper.

I found the easiest way was by folding down the corner before rolling as tightly as possible.

Try to roll the paper so that at the end the triangle is in the middle of the stem.

Glue down the triangle and trim both ends of the stem with scissors.

It doesn't matter if the stems are different lengths as this will make it easier to arrange your bouquet at the end.

Next you need to make the flower petals before covering the stems with crepe paper.

Measure approximately 15 cm by 25 cm of colourful crepe paper, making small marks with your pencil and cut out the rectangle.

Next, take your ruler and make a mark every 5 cm along the 25 cm side of the crepe paper.

Fold in a concertina at the 5 cm marks. i.e. fold 5 cm, then turn over and fold 5 cm again, turn, fold again and so on.

Next, cut along the folded edges to make 5 strips of crepe paper which will measure 15 cm by 5 cm.

Then to make a petal, fold one of the strips of crepe paper to make a crease. Unfold and pinch along the crease in the middle.

Then twist the middle once and fold over.

Finally, bunch up the end of the petal and twist it. Tuck your thumb into the petal to keep its shape.

Repeat this for each of the five crepe paper strips you have prepared. This will be enough to make one flower, so repeat the whole process again to make as many flowers as you want!

Next you're going to attach the petals to the flower stem. Put the petals in place at the end of the stem, making sure they over-lap slightly. Wrap thread around the base of the petals to secure them into place and place some sticky-tape on the end of the string to keep it all in place. This procedure is a little tricky, so take your time and have lots of patience.

To finish the flower, cut a long strip of green crepe paper and wrap it around the base of the flower all the way down the stem. I advise you secure the first bit of the crepe paper at the top of the stem with some glue. Likewise, when you reach the end of the stem (or the end of the crepe paper strip), cut the last part of the crepe paper into a triangle and glue down the end.

Repeat these steps to make the number of flowers you want.

Now for the leaves!
Cut approximately 4 cm by 30.5 cm of green crepe paper.

Fold it in half length-ways.

Very slightly wet your thumb and index finger and gently curl the corners to meet in the middle of the leaf.

Fold the leaf in half width-ways.

Holding the folded leaf in both hands, gently pinch the edge of the leaf, pulling it towards yourself and then pinching and pushing away to make a wave effect as shown in the pictures below.

Next, make a stem like the ones you made for the flowers. I advise you to make them smaller than the flower stems. Glue down the end of a long strip of crepe paper to the end of the stem and start to roll the crepe paper a little way down the stem.

Before continuing to wrap the crepe paper down the stem, place the leaf behind the part of the stem which you have already covered in green. Then continue to wind the crepe paper down the stem, making sure to wrap the leaves into the crepe paper as you go.

When you reach the end of the crepe paper (or stem), cut a triangle shape and glue it down.

Trim the end of the stem off to create a neat finish.

Repeat these steps to make as many leaves as you want! I made 12 flowers and 8 leaves for my bouquet. I suggest you decide how many to make by choosing what container you are going to present them in first; that way you can see how many fit as you make them.

The flower pot:

As a little extra I found a simple wooden pot in a craft shop which I could paint the colours I wanted. I chose the one you can see in the picture above because it looks like the shape of a tulip. I decided to paint the pot yellow and red, like the colours I'd chosen for the flowers.

I sanded down the pot a little bit, using sand-paper blocks (and wearing a dust mask, of course!) and then I used acrylic paint, applying two or three coats.

I outlined the shape of the pot with masking tape while working on each colour to keep the lines nice and neat; but took it off before the paint dried as I've had experience of accidentally pulling off paint from the areas I'd just been working on after leaving the masking tape on too long! To follow curved lines of a pot with masking tape, make small folds in the tape and use small pieces of tape to create the line you need.