Flowers from recycled magazines

I always have way too many old magazines and catalogs lying around the house.  Even when I throw piles of them away, it seems like there are still piles around the house!  So while I usually at least recycle them, I thought it would be neat if I could find a craft project that would reuse these magazines and catalogs for something fun and creative.  After research and thinking about other "paper crafts" I decided to work on making paper flowers out of the pages of the magazines.

Here's the info on what I did to make these cute flowers:

First, I took apart an entire Williams-Sonoma catalog so that the pages were each separated from one another.

Next, I drew a spiraling circle on the page, with the spiral going all the way in to the middle.  On the picture above, I used a kind of wide width spiral to show up clearly.  However, I found as I worked that the width of the spiral does make a difference in the flowers.  For flowers that look more like an unopened rose bud, a wider width - of about 3/4 inch to an inch is good.  But for the flowers I was doing, which were ultimately more open and spread out looking, a skinner width - 1/2 inch or so - worked better.  You can totally play around with the width yourself and see which one gives you the affect you like best for whatever project you want to do with the flowers.

Following the spiral I had drawn onto the page, I then cut out the spiral all the way to the center.

Next, starting from the outside end of the cut spiral, I rolled the long stream of paper up tightly all the way until the inside (center) end.  It is OK if during this process you notice that your width is not perfect all the way through!  As you are getting towards the center you will notice that one edge of the paper rolls tighter than the other edge because of the curves of the spiral.  The edge that is rolling tighter will be the back of the flower while the other edge will be the front.  When you get to the very center end of the spiral, the "tail" will not really roll all the way around.  That's OK, just let it hang out a little to the side for now.

Once I rolled the spiral all the way to the end, I turned it over in my hand so that the front edge is facing upwards and sort of "fluffed out" the roll a bit and let it loosen up somewhat to give it a fuller flower look.  I then turned the flower over with the back end facing up, taking care not to let it unravel further, and put it on a paper plate (so that I wouldn't burn my hand with hot glue!).  Using the hot glue gun, I secured the back edges of the paper spiral to hold the flower together, then tucked the "tail" over the back and glued it in place to hold it together.

For my project, I decided to use a few of the flowers on some glittered stems I had sitting around in a vase.  I think they definitely added a little creative character to the look of the stems.  I just used the hot glue to stick the flowers onto the stems.

Other ideas for the flowers seem endless.  You could use them on a wreath, as a cute addition to the top of a gift or package, spray paint them a bright color for some use, or add them to a clip for a hair accessory.  My next project with these is going to be to make a large decorative ball with the flowers glued all around it.