Tutorial - Paper Flower Stems

The weather here has been HOT the last few days! Unfortunately that's meant a definite lack of energy for doing anything outside of the absolute necessities, however today it cooled down a bit so I decided to finish one of my little projects from earlier.

I bought some more florists wire, so it was time to add stems to the better paper flowers that I made, yay! (I'm probably just going to ditch the crepe paper flowers and make some better ones!) Here's what I did:

First, using round nose pliers, bend one end of your florists wire into a cone shaped spring. This is the part we'll glue our paper flower onto later:

Side of spring

  Make sure you bend it so that the stem comes straight down from the centre of the coil, as shown here:

Back of spring

If you want to make a leaf as well, then further down the stem, bend the wire at a 90 degree angle, then use pliers to shape into a leaf outline. Make sure you bend it so that the top and bottom stem meet nicely :)

Front view with leaf

Side view with leaf

You could always do more than one leaf, or just do a plain stem. I decided to experiment with a leaf on each, some of the left side and some on the right, but it probably looks nicer to just do a plain stem and make leaves on their own stems, like I did for my vellum paper flowers earlier :)

Next, using florist's tape wrap around the cone and leaf. You'll probably need to use several layers to get the desired result. Make sure you wrap firmly, the florists tape should stretch as you go. Use the heat of your fingers to push down pesky corners if you need to. It should end up looking like this:

Now, to tie it all together we want to wrap the main stem in florist's tape.Cut a strip that is slightly longer than the stem:

Hold one end of the tape tight up against the end of the coil, at roughly a 45 degree angle to the stem. Use one hand to hold the end of the tape and with the other hand, use your thumb and index finger (or whatever other combination or method you prefer ;)) to wrap the tape around the stem, remembering to wrap firmly as you go:

We're nearly there!

Grab that paper flower now :)

Just pop a blob of glue onto the coil end of your stem and attach it to your paper flower! 

Hold it in place for a little while to make sure it stays put, and wipe away any excess glue.

Repeat for all the flowers you have made :) 

You can bend the stems and leaves as needed when you arrange them.

Now I just need to find (or make?) a new vase for this lot!