Creative Challenge 3 Results

I kicked off the year by sharing some goals and dreams for 2015. One of the most important of these was to get back in touch with my artistic roots, which I quickly decided would be much more fun to do with friends. And so began the Creative Challenge— a way for creatives from around the world, to come together online and tackle one artistic project per month.

Challenge #3: Paper Flowers
Ever since I started following along with the great Lia Griffith, I have been wanting to try my hand at creating paper flowers. If you have never checked out Lia’s blog, pull up a chair and pour yourself some tea, because her projects are all stunning and will keep you gawking for hours. What amazed me most about her floral projects and other paper flower creations I’ve seen floating around, is how realistic they look. Since I don’t have the best track record of keeping actual plants alive, I thought that this might be a good alternative for me.

Lia has tons of flower tutorials to choose from, but I ended up following this one— cupcake wrapper peonies. The fact that “cupcake” was in the title may or may not have played a hand in my decision.

This challenge started with a run to the craft store, since the only item from the materials list that I had was a pair of scissors. It was my very first trip to Hobby Lobby and it’s a miracle that I made it out of there. I was kind of blown away/overwhelmed with the amount of stuff they had— way more than the craft stores that I’m used to visiting. I don’t know whether I want to hurry back or stay away!

The tutorial started off easy enough. The first step was to cover some some styrafoam spheres in cupcake wrapper and then to create a stem using floral wire. My favorite part of this entire process was using a glue gun— something I hadn’t used since I was a kid. I’m currently racking my brain for other things in my life that may need to be glued.

The next step was cutting out rectangles from the cupcake wrappers in various sizes. I started with the lighter color pink in the center and worked outwards, adding the darker pink and larger petals on the outside of the bloom. Repeating this process took me about 2-3 hours. If I’m being honest, it felt a bit tedious, gluing each petal to the base, one by one, but I did end up with two very pretty flowers when I was finished.

Adding the leaves and wrapping the stem in tissue paper to finish them off felt like the icing on the (cup)cake. It wasn’t that they necessarily made them look more real, but definitely more complete.

While I’m glad that I dipped my toe into the world of paper flowers, it’s not something I see myself adding to my repertoire anytime soon. The process took just a little too long for me and I know that there are lots of other art projects out there that I still want to conquer!

Our Creative Challenge community outdid themselves, once again. I loved following along with the different methods, colors and materials these gals used to create their own paper flower projects. If you have been participating in the Creative Challenge, and haven’t joined our Facebook group yet, we would love to have you be part of our growing community! Here’s a look at just some of what was created this month:

Some of the bloggers in the group even wrote their own posts:

Lovilee // Anything and Everything // Planq Studio

The fourth challenge (drawing) is already underway! If you’d like to join in on this challenge, or any of the other challenges planned for the year, we would LOVE to have you on board. Until next month…#gocreatives