paper peonies

A while back, I had posted on how I wanted to try to make these paper flowers from a Martha Stewart kit.

I found the kit on sale at Michaels, so decided to give it a try. So without further ado, I give you my crafty attempt to make Martha Stewart's Crepe Paper Peonies.

All the components of the kit: Crepe paper, floral tape, wire stems, glue, instructions, & templates.

First step was to cut out all the crepe paper petals and leaves using the provided templates.
(this took a loooong time)


All the materials once everything was cut out. Time to start assembling!

First, I covered the long floral stems with floral tape, like so:
Cutting fringe on the piece that will become the flower centers...

Wrapping a fringed piece around the floral stem...

...to create the center of the flower:

Then I "shaped" the leaves by lightly stretching the crepe paper and molding it into shape.
(this took some practice to get it right)
Then I started attaching petals to the stem. Working with one petal at a time, I attached each with glue and molded it to shape.

Then you just keep attaching petals ...each flower uses about 14 petals.

A finished flower:
The second color flower finished:

The leaves were fairly simple. I just glued the floral stems onto the center of each leaf and wrapped the remaining stem in floral tape.
And voila! A finished bouquet:


This project took a lot longer than I thought it would. I started it and kept working on it a little bit here and there until I finally finished it a few weeks later. It took some patience to mold the petals to get the right shape--Crepe paper can be tricky to work with. Overall though, I think they turned out fairly nice. Not perfect like the Martha Stewart picture, but still pretty enough to be a table centerpiece.