Kusudama Paper Flower Centerpieces

Ok, since finishing the quilt, I've been busy folding paper. These centerpieces are for the Harmonaires annual potluck performance. I added a third color this year; red, white and black.

Yes, I made 15 of them, again. So each cardboard box (from Hobby Lobby) holds 12 paper flowers. Each paper flower has 5 folded pieces of paper. So that would mean hubby and I folded 900 pieces of paper! Yikes!

Since this event is always music themed, we'd need some music flowers. Don't worry, I didn't cut up important music. We used some old Children's hymn books that we cut the pages into 6" squares. Gotta love that the old books were $1.00 each at Deseret Industries. The black and red flowers are real origami paper that I ordered online in bulk. Good luck finding one color packs of usable paper, (which I got from Mulberry Paper).

The flowers are assembled with 1/8" inch Sookwang tape, except for the last piece. You need to leave the last side open to get your wire or pipe cleaner stem in the middle. Then hot glue the stem in and a flat backed jewel in the middle. Hot glue a slice of the green floral foam in the middle of the box and hide it with half a sheet of black tissue paper. Also cut up a piece of red tissue paper into quarters and use 2 per box. The stems will easily poke through the paper into the foam while arranging. As you get to the sides of the arrangement, I just folded the stems in half to get that domed look.

Here's an example of one on a 60" round table with our usual red mesh squares and glass gems holding the edges down. It still curls up 3 years later.

It doesn't look half bad at the party. I tried to get a picture of the room before guests showed up. They were quick right after we just finished getting the tables set.

Bonus project! Remember the Easter candy boxes I made this year? We did it again with smaller pillow boxes and a music notes embossing folder. This time the embossing folder is from Spellbinders.

Oh, and the candy is delicious Chocolate Dutch Mints from Jelly Belly. Yes, you can get them in plain white instead of the pastel colors.

We did give away the centerpieces to the Harmonaires choir members as a present. There is no way I had room to store 15 bulky centerpieces without crunching the paper flowers. Our guests were excited to take them home.