Brian and I have been slowly, but surely, redoing the laundry / mud room in our house. He’s in charge of the heavy-lifting stuff like putting together cabinets, mounting a chair rail, installing a sink and painting. I’m in charge of aesthetics – art work, window treatments and decorative touches. This weekend’s project was a paper orchid. I LOVE orchids, but they don’t bloom for long leaving nothing but a pretty green stem that has to be babied into blooming again. We tried, with some fair success, to keep an orchid when we lived downtown. My new one, however, needs little to no TLC…which is good….because all my TLC for the laundry room is directed at washing, drying, folding, washing, drying, folding…..repeat….repeat…repeat

The first thing I did for this project…besides thinking, “I wonder if I could make a paper orchid” was to hit the good ol’ Google search. I’m 98% certain that I’ve never had an idea that someone else didn’t a. have before me and b. decide to post pictures / instructions or a template on line! I found this awesome “moth orchid” template on a website by RadMegan (who is, indeed Rad to share her template!)

http://radmegan.blogspot.com/2011/03/making-paper-orchids-how-to.html

I downloaded said template, formatted it for my cricut, cut it out 7 times and away we go! This was all purely trial and error based on some actual orchid pictures I looked up…plus a few more paper sample ones I saw on line. The one thing I didn’t do was to read a tutorial (that’s like cheating…and besides, it takes far too long – ha!) Here…instead, is the tutorial of what I did

Step 1: gather materials. I actually forgot a couple that are not pictured, but here is the complete list

one silk floral stem (stem should contain wire, but any flowers on the stem should ideally be attached by plastic since these will be cut off and you don’t want to damage your scissors…I found mine in our crawl space…purchased from Michael’s some time ago), scizzors, orchid template, heavy white card stock, pencil, floral wire, floral tape, water color pencils and water brush or just plain old water colors….or an ink pad!, hot glue gun, glass vase, rocks and green card stock

Step 1: Cut the silk flowers off of your stem

 

Step 2: I used my cricut, but you can also cut out the pieces of the orchid template and then trace them on to paper. Cut out each group of shapes then use water color pencils to lightly color around the edges of each shape. I completely colored the two pieces that go in the center of each flower to add contrast (plus this is kind of what the real moth orchid looks like….light on the outside and dark inside). If you want to use an ink pad, you can lightly drag it around the sides of each shape on an angle (called distressing) and then use a small sponge or your fingers to lightly color the inside pieces. If you use the water color pencils, use a damp brush to blend the pencil around the edges and into the center of each piece to create the watercolor effect.

Here are the pieces before I used a water brush

Follow the assembly instructions printed on the template. Since my flowers were slightly damp from the water brush, it was really easy to use a pencil to curl the edges once I had it all glued together. Sorry for the shadows on the pictures!

Step 3: take a nice-sized piece of floral wire, one for each of your flowers and double it over. Wrap a portion of the wire with floral tape

Step 4: Using a hot glue gun, attach one piece of wire to the back of each flower

Step 5: Arrange your flowers on your “naked” stem by twisting the floral wire around and securing each (looking up pictures of actual orchids on the internet is helpful with the placement….all the flowers face forward and bunch together) Place from the bottom of the stem up. I made 7 flowers since someone once told me (my 5th grade teacher actually) that mother nature works in odd numbers :)

Step 6: After you have wrapped each individual flower around the main stem, go back and wrap (from the bottom up) the entire main piece in floral tape. This is a bit tricky and involves some weaving around the flowers. You will also have to stop and start by breaking the tape and beginning with a new piece, but floral tape is SO forgiving and easy to work with…it all looks like a naturally bumpy branch in the end!

Step 7: Stick your branch in a vase filled with rocks. I also free-hand cut some leaves, squeezed them tight at one end, attached them to the stem for floral tape and used a pencil to shape them the way I wanted.

I just couldn’t get a good picture of this thing – but there it is, ready for my laundry room!