Paper flower

I was fumbling around on Pinterest today, and I looked through my "crafty" board. I thought, "Hm, I bet these paper flowers are easy to make!" So, I followed the links to the how-tos at Seven Thirty Three and Ellinee. They are beautiful! But, they require things like brads and grommets, special punches, bamboo skewers, and patience. Right now, I have none of those things. So, I made the cheap, quick and easy version. Here's what I ended up with:

I think it's beautiful! Here's how I did it:

1. You may remember from previous posts that I have a lot of magazine subscriptions (They were all free!) I had these images of me going through and reading all these articles and becoming a pop culture trivia knowledge database. Yeah, right. But, I do love to look at the pretty pictures! Some of the pages are so beautiful and colorful! So, I selected three pages that were really pretty. I tried to pick pages that were pretty on both sides because both sides will show a little. The great thing is that they don't have to be perfect. (Nothing in this project does!)
I chose this one and a pink-ish one and a blue-ish one.

2. Next, cut the paper into manageable squares. I cut the whole stack of papers at the same time, and I cut the stack into fourths, so I would up with twelve small rectangles of paper. Like this:

3. Next you cut out the flower-ish shape. I did not use a pattern, a stencil, or a special punch. I did not really even follow a circle shape. It's more of a blob. But, it's a beautiful blob. I picked up four pieces of paper and cut a blob, then another four sheeted-blob, and the last four-sheeted blob. Obviously, each of the three blobs were not shaped the same. In fact, while I was cutting, some of the papers shifted, so each of the four pages did come out in the same blob shape. The main thing to remember when cutting the blobs is to aim for a round-ish overall shape, with scalloped-ish edges.

4. Stack all the blobs on top of each other. You'll have a handful of pretty colorful blobs! At this point (this is something I didn't do but I highly recommend) you should probably twist the papers a little bit so that the blobs are not perfectly stacked on top of one another, but they are a little bit whompy-jawed.

5. Turn the blobs over and staple them in the middle-ish. The flat end of the staple will be on the bottom/back of the flower, and the prongs will eventually be hidden on the inside of the flower.

6. Fold the staple in half. When you do that, the flower will also kind of fold up. That's a good thing. As you can see, I used a pink staple! (Not that it matters, but I like it anyway!)

7. Then, just squish! Starting with the top paper, squish up one page at a time until you end up with a little rose bud kind of thing.

8. After the squishing, you go back through and do a little bit of flattening. You're not going to iron out the pages or anything, but you want to be able to see the layers.

TADA! Now, you have a super fast, super easy, super beautiful flower! You can make millions of them and put them in your yard, then you wouldn't have to water your flowers. Or, you can sit your kids in the middle of a stack of magazines and tell them they have to turn all the magazines into flowers before they can leave. Or, it could just be a fun quick project.
Next, I think I will try it with cloth and modpodge. I think that might work...