Instructions for Crepe Paper Flowers

Video Transcript

"In this clip, we're going to make a crepe paper flower. For this clip you need some green crepe paper, a colorful crepe paper of whatever color you want, some straws, scissors, a felt tip pen, and sticky tape. First of all, take a strip of green crepe paper with the lines of the grain of the paper going downwards. Fold it in half; fold it in half again, and half again if you like. And then, cut several chop and stops as close as you can to each other down the grain of the crepe paper. This will make the center of the flower and look like the stamens. Undo it, and then you'll find you've got lots of little stamens. Gather them up squishing them a bit as you go, and that'll make the center of the flower. And get some sellotape and fasten it as tightly as you can round the base of the flower, and then with your fingers just tease out these bits, flatten them a bit, and squeeze them between your fingernails as you do it. That'll just give it a little bit of shape as you go around. If one or two pull out don't worry about it; it doesn't matter. You've got a good thickness of flowers there, and they'll just curl over a little bit to make it more interesting; right, now the petals, then it'll fluff out and that looks like the flower center. Flower petals; take your colorful strip, and again, fold it in half, fold it in quarters, fold it in eighths till you've got a piece about that size. Now, just to give you a guide, with your felt tip pen; from the bottom to the top about halfway along start to draw the shape of your petal, and from the bottom to the top, the shape of your petal. Now then, with your scissors very carefully cut along that line just on the inside of it. It's better if you can cut that line away, because we don't really want to see it. We just want to form the shape of the petal. I'm cutting the blue line away. I don't want that now. So, now I've got a pointy shape of a petal. Undo it, and then wrap that round your flower center, so match the bottom edges of both pieces together, and as you wrap it round it just please hitch up a little bit. Scrunch it up a little bit as you go round, because if you wrap it up too tight it won't make a nice spread out flower. Just scrunch it up. As you go round it you can see it's starting to look rather nice. The points of the petal should, if you can get them so that they fill in the gaps; there's a gap there so try to get a petal there. It's a bit of a gap there so try to get another petal in that gap, and at the bottom I'm just gathering it with my fingers as tightly as I can. There's a gap here so I need another petal, and a last gap here so a last petal, and all the time it's scrunched round. Not just tightly wrapped; scrunched and pleated as I go. It's a fiddly job that, but with a bit of practice you can make it quite neat, and then a piece of sticky tape will go round there; right round and holding all the petals up firmly to make that rather nice lily flower. Now, you need to get one of your straws, hold it against the sticky tape, hold it firmly with your thumb, attach the straw firmly with sticky tape as tightly as you can. And if it's a bendy straw you can bend it over a little bit. Then, look at your petals. The grain of the paper is going up the petal, so just put your thumbs in the middle and very, very gently pull it, and it gives the petal a little bit more shape. Don't pull hard or it's only paper; it'll tear. Thumbs in the middle, and very gently pull just to give your petals a bit more of a realistic shape. Even with the central petals you can do that, and the flower starts to form. Now leaves; you can do it the same way by folding in half. The grain of the paper's going up this time, so I'm folding in half, folding in quarters, and that's about the size I want. On there I'm going to draw a leaf shape by going like a curly cue that way, and a curly cue that way. Cut that out; again, you can cut out away from the blue felt tip pen. We don't need that to show. Now, look at that leaf. You can do it while it's flat this time, just pushing your thumbs in the middle, and very gently pulling out gives the leaves a bit more of a realistic shape. And then each leaf can be attached separately with a small piece of sticky tape onto the stalk of the flower to make it look pretty. That's how to make a crepe paper flower."