Tuesday, July 24, 2012

DIY Paper Flower Wall



Hello first blog post! (Well first public blog post, I do have a private blog from the 10th grade that will be quite the time capsule some day...)

I'm getting married on September 8th (47 days and counting) and coming from the crafty family that I do, our wedding will have lots of personal touches. My fingers will also be completely burned to the nubs from my nimbus3000 glue gun, but the guests will enjoy the details. My first inspiration for the wedding was this pin I came across on Pinterest:
I absolutely LOVED this flower wall and after some research found that it was made 100% of paper. So I went on a mission and dragged my loving mother into it (she is my crafting buddy and inspiration.) We started one night watching Pretty Little Liars (one of my guilty pleasures) and messed around with a huge pack of 8 1/2 x 17 paper we found at a discount store. These were some of our first creations:

We sat on the living room floor and searched for websites with instructions on how to make flowers with only paper, tissue paper and of course, a glue gun.

To make the giant paper poppy (top right) and tissue paper flower (bottom right) we used directions from Martha Stewart Crafts. To make the paper rose, we used these instructions (also from Martha) but instead of crepe paper, we used our thick white discount store paper. 

The last flower in the bottom left was a random creation of our own by cutting simple petals shaped like pointed ovals, folding them in half, and making the same center as the giant paper poppy. We learned that the more imperfect you cut them, the more realistic they look - and the more petals you add the prettier they are :). That means more work as well.....

So by the end of the night our living room floor looked like this:
One last addition in this picture are the cupcake-paper carnations. We made this out of boredom and only have cupcake (things? what are they called? holders?) left. But guess what - found 'em on Martha Stewart as I am searching now.

My main goal was to have flowers of all shapes, sizes and texture as long as they were white - but I really wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. The next issue was figuring out how to make a wall like in the original Pinterest find. In our basement we had three huge thin metal panels that my mom had used to attach design ideas (she is an interior designer...it's in my blood!). Well, we took those out of her studio (weddings call for sacrifices...) and decided to put magnets on the back of each flower. We used simple round magnets the size of nickels, they are really inexpensive as well. Not everyone has these laying around, and they actually wouldn't be too difficult to construct - a thin sheet of sheet metal that can be measured and cut at your local home improvement store and then lined with a relatively thick wood trim. You'd want to secure wood around the entire perimeter of the metal as well as two-three horizontal pieces to make sure the metal stays firm and doesn't droop inwards. 

Here are a few pictures of what the three panels are looking like so far:
 

We are hoping to cover all of the remaining grey background that shows through with simple white leaves that we can attach underneath some of the flowers.

The pancake-loving fiance also added a loving touch with a flower or two. (But only two, and in exchange for a warm cooked meal and some Parks and Recreation episode watching...
He's a keeper. <3




                       

Update: Finished Product!! :)






Update 8/21/2013 - I'm now making a second wall with more DIY steps. You can see more about it here.
DIY Paper Flower Wall Take 2!
DIY Paper Flower Wall Take 2: Part 1
DIY Paper Flower Wall Take 2: Part 2 Large Cardstock Flowers
DIY Paper Flower Wall Take 2: The End Results


13 comments:

  1. This is amazing! Would you be willing to sell/rent the wall for another wedding? I would love to use it :) Thanks!

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    1. Thank you! :) I definitely wouldn't be able to sell it, but have considered renting it out before. You'd need to be somewhat close to the DC area though, in order for it to work. If you'd like to message me in my Etsy store we can talk more, just click the "Etsy" badge at the top of the page. :)

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  2. I am in the process of making my all white flower wall for my wedding... I love yours. I am so happy to see that some one else did what I have wanted because half of my family thinks I'm crazy for trying to make this thing. The creation of the wall structure is really the challenging part which I have some ideas for and like your magnet idea too.

    How did you transport your flower wall structure to your wedding venue? It's so large and they can't stack in piece because the flowers will be squished.
    This is my most pressing predicament.

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    1. Hi Stephanie, I'm glad you're making one as well. I LOVED this, hopefully you have somewhere you can keep it after the wedding and maybe rent it out to people in your area! Because all of the flowers were on magnets and the board was magnetic, we put all three boards - without the flowers on - in a Uhaul truck. Then the flowers were carefully placed in boxes and stacked in there as well, when we got to the venue we placed all of the flowers on at the scene. It was a bit of work, and I suggest you make sure you bring a glue-gun along and make a few extra flowers in case the way you arrange them once you are there is a bit different. Something we didn't do, but might have made it a bit easier would be to also make some large white leaves on magnets. This would help to fill in the space and not worry as much about assembling the day of since the leaves would really help to fill in some background space. I'm curious to hear your other ideas for the structure as that was something we struggled with initially!

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    2. Hi Stephanie,

      Did you figure out how to transport the wall? I am doing the same thing with four panels of paper flowers. I am worried that the flowers will be squashed when we put them all on a truck.

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  3. That's fantastic! I am in the process of making one for our wedding too! Only I have to say my hunt to find the right paper stock is challenging. I make a flower and then a few weeks later I am noticing the paper has drooped a bit and the paper flower suddenly looks like it is in need of water haha!

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    1. Hi Nicole, how did your wall come out? I'm making a second one now and I found some great cardstock that really worked well, however it hurt my hands to work with it! Wondering how yours is coming!

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  4. This is amazing! What did you spend on all the items needed?

    Jessica

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    1. Hi Jessica! I updated this blog post to talk about the price - for this version of the wall I think we spent somewhere under $100 for all the paper supplies. That being said, I didn't have to pay to make the standing board which was the sheet metal. I think you'd probably spend another $100 to buy supplies for the backdrop. (Still much cheaper than I thought! :) ) I'm hopefully going to post something soon about new ideas for how to make the actual "wall" or board part of it - I've found some other neat ideas. Thanks for reading!! <3

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  5. Hi,

    How did you get the final product to stand up? Do you have pictures from the back/side? I'm not sure how to get it to stand up. Also, did your boards just get put side by side or do they interlock?

    Thanks!

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    1. I'm so sorry I just found this! Did you try making one? How did it end up? The metal boards leaned up against the barn wall - they weren't free standing which was definitely a limitation of this! I also just put them side by side, no need to interlock them since the flowers overlapped and didn't show clean lines if that makes sense.

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  6. Hi! Are you still renting out your paper flower wall? If so, for how much?

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    1. Hi Val, it's currently being stored in my parent's basement and I live out of state now (for one more year)- it needs a bit of updating so I haven't really thought about renting it out. If you want to message me on Etsy we can talk privately there, but I don't think it will really be feasible for me to consider renting again until I'm back in MD next October.

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