How to Make a Flower Bouquet Collage

hi I'm Julia hood and I'm the manager of school and family learning at Reynolda house Museum of American Art today in our pop-up studio I'm going to show you how to make a flower bouquet by cutting flowers out of paper and putting them together as with many of our projects this is something that you can do in a variety of different ways but I'll show you some different flowers that you can make and combine together into a bouquet you might use all of the different flowers or just pick one or two and then ultimately put them together into a bouquet so what something like this when you're done it might be something you want to give to someone special for a little inspiration you might want to check out Renauld his painting of flowers in a glass pitcher by Severn Rosen the artist filled his painting with lots of different flowers and didn't worry if the flowers would have been naturally blooming at the same time as each other or not we can do the thing today find links to different flower templates below or make up your own I'll show you what you need to complete this project and how to make it

for this project you will need to either print or trace the flower templates provided on our website and in the link below you can also make up your own flowers and follow the ideas in this video you'll need colored or patterned papers that will become your flowers today I'm using pages from magazines but you could also use old wall calendars sturdy wrapping paper or other decorative paper before you cut up any magazines or other papers you find make sure that they may be used as art supplies for your vase you can use paper or either wax paper or aluminum foil our example uses wax paper to look like the glass pitcher in Severin Rosen's painting you need scissors and some kind of adhesive liquid glue and a glue stick may be easiest but tape would also work if you want some of your flowers to stand up from the paper you'll need something to help give them height today I'm using an old toilet paper roll but scraps of cardboard or a bottle cap would also do the trick you'll need a pencil and green markers or crayons to draw the flower stems finally you will need a piece of paper to be the background for your flowers I've got heavy bristol board but poster board or a cardboard panel from a cereal box will work as well first cut out your templates or prepare your own

next choose what materials you want to use for your vase and trace and cut your template

you can cut away extra material to make it easier to hold her paper and cut

look through magazines that you may cut and find places with interesting colors and patterns about the size of the flower templates here's a nice patch of pink that I want to use for the swamp Rose it's totally okay that this has extra lines and drawings on it carefully tear or cut out the pages that you want to use then trace and cut out your flowers before you cut the detailed edges of your flowers cut away the extra paper

some of the flowers have centers to cut cut out the shape and then glue it to the center of your flower

here are other examples of how you might find interesting patterns and colors and magazines

for the poppy the dashed lines on the pattern template show where to make a small slit so that you can fold up the petals for the Morning Glory the lines show where to make a crease to begin to turn the pedal into a sort of trumpet shape

when cutting the Carnation begin by cutting out the outside circle then cut the larger triangles to separate some petals from one another

you

then use the tip of your scissors to cut tiny triangles around the edge to give it a jagged edge be careful with your fingers cut a second piece for each carnation or more to give it lots of petals

the sunflower also needs two pieces or more to make the petals as well as a circle for the center when you glue the two petal pieces together glue them only at the centres so that later you can lift the petals up

but trillium has a pedal and a sepal that goes behind the blossom again put glue only in the center to attach the two pieces gently curl the edges of the paper up like this to give the flower some depth to make some of the flowers appear to stick out from your bouquet cut a thin ring of a toilet paper tube and glue it to the back of the flower make sure to leave some flowers without this kind of stand so that they can be in the background of your bouquet I'm using glue to attach these but you could also use tape as you see here with the Trillium

with some of the flowers you can press the center slightly into the ring of the toilet paper tube to help them stand up

for this next step you'll need a background large enough to hold your flowers a sturdy piece of paper is great but if not you can cut open a cereal box and use one of the large panels cut off any extra flaps to make the bouquet begin by arranging your flowers on the paper

where you would expect to see a stem draw stems down into what will be your vase if you are using wax paper draw your stems first then glue the vase down for other vases you can add the stems at the end you might need to move some flowers out of the way to be able to attach your base

here's just one example that uses all the flower templates what can you make