Cupcake Bouquet (Tutorial)

My daughter's 14th birthday is this weekend. The theme has sort of evolved into Cupcakes. Giant Wilton cupcake pan, cupcake paper plates and wrapping paper, and one giant stuffed plush cupcake (from Gramma). I thought it would be cute to make a bouquet of flowers that looked like cupcakes. Here's how I did it.

The supplies: 6 silk carnations, 6 2.5 in. Styrofoam balls, cupcake liners, and glitter glue. The Mylar film, ribbon and cylinder box are for the vase.

Cut the ends off the balls so you get sort of a small cookie-shaped piece.

 Foam "cookie"

Roll the edge of the "cookie" on a hard surface to flatten it, and to make sure it fits in the cupcake liner.

Remove the flower from the stem, poke the stem into the center of the Styrofoam. Try to keep the stem perpendicular.

Push it all the way through so you get a nice, clear hole.

Put hot glue in a circle in the bottom of the cupcake liner. DO NOT get it in the center - you need to poke the stem through that.

Using a knife, remove a cone-shaped piece from the center of the Styrofoam, around the hole. This will accommodate the bottom of the carnation, making it sit deeper in the cup. (If you're using flowers other than carnations, that have a flatter base, you might be able to skip this part.)

Poke the stem through the hole, top down, out the bottom of the cup. This will mark where you push the stem through the other way so you can reattach the flower.

Put the flower back on the stem, snugging it down into the Styrofoam cookie.

Run a little hot glue around the bottom, to hold the cup in place.

Cute, huh? You can stop here, or...

Put some glitter glue on a piece of waxed paper.

Dab your flower in the glitter glue, adding a little color and sparkle to the tips of the petals.

Like sprinkles on a cupcake!

I used a raised cake rack to put them in to try, to keep them from touching each other and transferring glue, and to keep all surfaces exposed to air for drying.

Here's the vase they'll sit it once the glitter glue has dried. The ribbon is held in place with double-stick tape. After the party this weekend, this can go in her room, and no glass to break!

Xmas Ornaments

A friend of mine recently got his own place. One of his housewarming gifts was a Christmas tree. I'd asked another friend earlier if he had one, and if he'd need ornaments - question answered! I wanted to make something untraditional and funky, and since we've often been covered in dye, I thought tie-dyed ornaments (sorta) would be just the thing.

I had initially thought to use that tie-dye-printed felt and sew something, but then (when I couldn't find any) I saw these wonderful laser-cut wooden ornaments, and thought they'd make nice frames for tie-dye patterned paper. Stupidly, I thought it would be easy enough to grab that with the scrapbook papers. Wrong! However, I did find some lovely origami paper that looks dyed.

Materials

Cutting the circles

I used my Fiskars cutting tool to make 2.5" circles of paper; the origami paper was thin enough I could do all 6 sheets at once. Then I made circles out of glitter cardstock (one at a time). 

Gluing the paper circles to the cardstock
I color-coordinated the cardstock with the pieces of origami paper, and glued them together.

Gluing the glitter on the ornaments
I took the ornaments outside to spray with adhesive, then used fine glitter to cover them. I did not prime or paint the wood, so the color variations and the singed edges from the laser cutting shows through the glitter. By not painting the wood, I have a natural color, and the dark edges look great. (Plus I eliminated a step by choosing not to paint them.)

Gluing the paper circles to the ornaments
I used Tacky Glue and a foam brush to pounce on a little glue. As you can see, the 2.5" circles aren't quite the size of the ornaments. I considered tracing and cutting, and quickly decided that was way more work than I wanted to do.

Glitter glue edging to "seal" the paper

I glued around the edges of the paper with coordinating glitter glue, to help seal the paper to the wood. 

DONE

I added a length of ribbon to hang it by, and the ornament is done! The origami paper has really subtle color variations, and I'm really pleased with how well this worked. I made a set for three of my friends and a set to keep.

If you're curious about where the ornaments and the origami paper came from, I got them both at Michael's - and the ornaments were on clearance for 79¢ each.