MPCo. Challenge: grow a flower

Spring is my favorite time of the year. I love the warm days after a long, cold winter. I love opening the windows and letting the nice breeze blow through the house. But most of all, I love the flowers. So many pretty colors and smells – they make me happy! With that said, you can probably guess why I have chosen ‘Grow a Flower’ as the first challenge for the Marks Paper Company blog!

The Challenge: Using our paper, create a flower(s) on a scrapbook page, altered item, home décor item, mini album, you name it! How creative can you be? Put on those garden gloves and get growing!

I want to share the project that I did for this challenge and give some step-by-step instructions on how I made it:

•I started with a one inch Styrofoam ball and cut it in half. I had dew drops that coordinated perfectly with the paper I wanted to use....

•I applied dots of gel adhesive to the Styrofoam....

....and started to glue the dew drops in place....

•Once the Styrofoam was covered I set it aside to dry...

•I had the MPCo. papers selected that I wanted to use and I knew I wanted to cut out the large flower on the one pattern and use that as the base of my flower....

•With a coordinating pattern, I cut a long strip, about one inch or so wide, and then made tiny narrow snips along one of the long sides, not quite all the way across....

•I folded the solid uncut edge up and then stitched the piece in place with my sewing machine (remove the excess length)....

I wasn't too concerned about neatness because I planned on covering that part....

...which I did with freehand cut circular shapes that I distressed and inked....

•I poked a hole through the center and inserted florist wire, making a loop so there would be a more substantial piece of wire on the front to 'grab'...

....here's the back view....

•I used florist tape to secure a few silk leaves to the wire stem.....

•I added glitter glue to the curled petals on the flower....

....and then sprinkled on some white glitter....

•Last, but not least, I adhered the center Styrofoam piece with the dew drops...

TAH DAH! I grew a flower:

I have it in my living room, where the furniture is red, and it coordinates perfectly and looks so cute 'growing' out of a pot of grass on a shelf....

Check out the MPCo. blog for details on entering the challenge. Information will be available on Wednesday, April 15th. :-)

Comments

that is so awesome patty!!!

Posted by: Nicole | April 14, 2009 at 10:34 PM

This may be the coolest flower EVER!!!!

Posted by: scrappermimi | April 14, 2009 at 11:25 PM

That is just adorable!!

Posted by: Cindy Gilchrist | April 15, 2009 at 08:06 AM

Very nice Patty love those little dew drop beads....Now if I find time this afternoon I am so going to go "grow" something..hope I have some paper left.....
thanks for giving us a challenge I love challenge blogs...
angie

Posted by: Angie Aleszczyk | April 15, 2009 at 03:26 PM