Newspaper Corsage

As the Sweetheart Valentine dance approached, my date and I decided that instead of buying corsages we would make them ourselves. We decided on crafting them out of newspaper to save a few bucks and a few trees. This build took a little under 2 hours and cost about $5 in total (the only thing I had to buy was the ribbons).

• Hot glue gun + hot glue
• Scissors
• Paintbrushes (one flat brush, one fan brush)

• Newspaper
• Wire or fake flower stems
• Ribbon
• Paint
• Elastic
• A paper plate

Fair warning: I say 'rose' and 'glue' quite a bit in the tutorial.

Before I started, I cut out a bunch of circles in the newspaper. I choose smaller sizes so that the tiny flowers I made would look more realistic.

Making the roses was actually very simple. To start the swirl in the center of the rose, I took a medium petal and stuck my stem in the center. I put hot glue on one half of it and folded it down. Before the glue dried, I swirled the pedal. It's important to swirl the rose while the glue is still hot so it holds it's shape. Rmember to be careful. This project will probably result in a few burned fingers

To add the petals, I put glue on the lower part of a newspaper circle and pressed it to the base of the swirl I had made. I made sure to tilt the petals slightly outward when gluing them on.

If you look at a real rose, you'll see the middle of a rose has the petals closer together than the outside of the rose As I added the petals to the rose I made sure to follow the pattern a real rose naturally has. The roses were relatively easy to make. It just took quite a bit of time. I made four in total for my corsage.

After I finished them I cut the stem off so that I could attach it to the base of my corsage.

To make the base. I measured, and cut out a piece of elastic a half inch shorter than the circumference of my wrist (so that it won't be too loose). I sewed the edges together.

Corsages have a base to hold the flowers. Because I'm a poor high school student, I made my base out of a paper plate. I cut out two rounded square like shapes out of a plate, and glued them together. I then cut slits into the paper base, and into the elastic. I threaded a ribbon through them to attach them together.

I decided to make some leaves to make my corsage a little more complex. I cut them out of newspaper, and took a bit of paint (I watered it down a bit, so that you could still see the news print), and brushed it over the leaves (making sure to coat both sides).

I took my fan brush and lightly brushed on some gold paint over the edges of two of the roses. I did the same, but with grey paint over the other two.

If you haven't figured out yet, our color scheme was grey and gold. To keep the corsage in one place , I stuck it over two paint bottles. I glued the ribbons on first. I literally just glued them everywhere so it looked ridiculous and loopy. Then I took some leaves and added them to the flowers. I choose the place where I wanted my flowers and, glued them on. I added a couple more leaves in places that looked plain, and voila!

It was easy, cheap, and turned out absolutely gorgeous.

If you make one of these for prom, or just for fun, I'd love to see!