Paper Flowers
Fig. 99
Have you ever made paper flowers? If not, you have probably seen them made by the cardboard patterns which dealers in tissue paper sell. How about making the patterns yourself—for the poppies, daisies and tulips and all the other flowers. It will be an interesting thing to do and not difficult. Catch one of the poppy petals as it floats off from the flower, blown by a summer breeze. Notice that there are only four petals (if it is a single poppy), the two smaller ones setting across the larger pair below. Poppies are charming and much simpler than other flowers to copy in paper. You may have noticed that the petals of the real ones look almost exactly like silky, crinkled paper. Draw an outline of the petal a little larger than life on heavy brown paper. Fold the paper back at the base of the petal and cut it out in the two thicknesses so that it will look like Fig. 100. The two lower petals will be cut in the same way but larger. You now have a pattern for as many poppies as you choose. They can be made in various colours—white, red, pink, pink and white and yellow. You can buy poppy centres ready to use, or if you prefer you can make them yourself in this way: For a poppy four and a half inches across, cut a circle of yellow paper an inch and a quarter in diameter. Fringe the edge about half an inch. Next take a wire stem, bend the end into a small circle, cover it with a tiny ball of cotton batting and over this a piece of olive-green tissue paper, forming it to look as much as possible like the real poppy centre (see Fig. 101). Wind the edges of the paper close around the wire stem. Now run the other end of the stem down through the yellow circle, brushing it with paste to attach it to the green part of the centre. Slip the smaller pair of petals on the stem, then the larger pair (with a little paste between), so that the smaller pair will set directly across the larger. This completes the poppy. The stem is wound with strips of olive-green tissue paper, and the leaves are cut from the same paper by a pattern which you can easily make by laying a poppy leaf on a sheet of cardboard and drawing around it with a sharp-pointed pencil.
Fig. 100
Fig. 101