Blooming for just a few brief weeks in spring, cherry blossoms are famously ephemeral. Unless, that is, you craft artful renditions of them from glassine or vellum, in which case they'll deliver year-round pleasure. Embellish woody branches that you have pruned from the yard with the colorful blooms, and use them to decorate a mantel or spruce up a collection of favor bags.
To create five-petal blossoms, start by cutting pink or red glassine or vellum into 3 1/2-inch and 4 1/2-inch squares. Fold a square into a flat cone, following steps 1 to 4.
Using scissors, make four angled cuts to remove the top of the cone as in step 5. 
With a utility knife, carve out a small rectangular sliver on each side of the cone. Snip off a tiny bit of the pointed tip of the cone, and unfold and shape the paper to yield a blossom. Collect branches from the yard, and poke their tips through the centers of the blossoms. Place the decorated branches in a tall vase filled with pebbles to anchor the display. For favor bags, fill colored-paper bags with token gifts of your choice, and fold down the closed tops of the bags twice. Punch a hole through one folded corner. Push colored brad through flower, then hole in bag to fasten
Please ad the degree of angle for the folds. I can never get it right without folding several times and that makes the flower messy.
Dear Espresso, Look very closely at the image where they want you to make 4 cuts. It looks like a curve but it is 4 small angled cuts. Maybe use a magnifying glass. You'll see. Don't panic.
You lost me at cut a four angle .... After that I have no clue what the instruction means. Is there a clearer explanation as I am having a wedding here in a month and these are perfect for what I want thanks!!
You lost me at cut a four angle .... After that I have no clue what the instruction means. Is there a clearer explanation as I am having a wedding here in a month and these are perfect for what I want thanks!!
You lost me at cut a four angle .... After that I have no clue what the instruction means. Is there a clearer explanation as I am having a wedding here in a month and these are perfect for what I want thanks!!
You lost me at cut a four angle .... After that I have no clue what the instruction means. Is there a clearer explanation as I am having a wedding here in a month and these are perfect for what I want thanks!!
no le entiendoooo :(
Precioso arreglo con flores de papel Como con tan pocos elementos se puede
realizar tan bellos proyecto.
Muchas gracias.
Besos.
glassine is moisture proof paper. cereal comes in glassine bags. it is also used to hold postage stamps and photographs. vellum is similar in texture and weight .it too is translucent. it is popular with card makers and scrapbookers hope this helps.
I love these ideas... made a link on my blog for my Friday links... always the best ideas and tips
http://www.thepunctuationmark.com
find Glassine gere:
http://kimscrane.com
Terrible directions, cute idea. Thanks to Kizuna for the tissue paper tip!
Sorry to add two comments in a row, but I also don't know what glassine or vellum is, and was not able to find any. Tissue paper is a much more practical material to use, and looks very nice.
This is a cute idea. The directions are a little fuzzy but with some practice pretty flowers can result. I sand-papered the sticks I found to give them a nicer overall look. Very pretty!
does anyone know how the mirror in the background is made to look so antique??? Would love to know!!! Thnx for the tissue paper idea...that I have in the house (no long drive to the craft store!)
took some practice making the flowers but they turned out great. In step 5 i only cut out a sliver on one side of the cone instead of both. I just found it easier and it still looked good.
I coudn't find any coloured glassine or vellum so used pink and white tissue paper instead. Also used a bit of glue to hold the flowers onto the branches to make it more secure.
This sounds like a cute idea, I am going to try and make them.
Unrealated question......Can anyone tell me how they can get a picture to post with their comments? I see different ones but dont know how to get one.
This is really pretty. I think I will try to make this. It seems really simple.
I'd use chenille stems (pipe cleaners) if no twigs are available. Probably not as cute, but serviceable, until you can locate some twigs. The pipe cleaners come in various colors,, so you could try a few light brown, tan,
Martha done good! These are beautiful. I do agree it could be a bit more detailed though. Have never heard of glassine, and its a little funky small in the steps. =P. Would tissue paper work too? We just moved to a new house and have no plants (had hundreds of beautiful plants in the old garden) what would be a good twig substitute, or should I hit the local park? ;)
thank you MissPat now I see number 2 is where I went wrong
thank you MissPat now I see number 2 is where I went wrong
thank you MissPat now I see number 2 is where I went wrong
Looked difficult but once I got going at it ...not so difficult. Thank you for the pattern.
I followed the directions and have a beautiful little five petal blossom.
Sorry, I was wrong. I misread the number 2 illustration. Folded on an angle and following the rest of the instructions, you will have a 5-sided petal. Try it.
The above instructions produce a 12-sided blossom. Interesting but not a cherry blossom.
How do you get 5 petal flower when you fold a paper in half and fold 3 more times you get an even number. What am I not seeing in the instructions that you end with a five petal flower?
Yeah, I think clear instructions steps with photos will helps a lot too. Just think of those at www.instructables.com
I agree, the pictures are usually somewhat small. What I do is print the page, then scan it as a PDF file from my scanner. Then I save it to a file That way you can zoom as much as you want. It takes a bit for it to go fuzzy, but it really helps me.
I haven't tried it yet, but you can copy and paste into a Word document outside of the Internet and make the fonts larger and easier to read. Hope this is helpful.
I agree with blissity. I assumed that the pictures would zoom when clicked on--I am visual and always feela clear picture is better than written directions. Could you make these zoomable as an afterthought? I'd love to make this project.
When some of the instructions are too small to see and there is no zoom I copy and paste the visual instructions into the body of a blank e-mail and then click on the pasted instructions and enlarge them that way. I then just print them out. They may come out a bit blurry but still very readable.
For years I've felt that Martha has interesting ideas but doesn't actually show you how to do them - and I consider myself a fairly crafty person. However, this time I agree it's because of a lack of zoom...it says make 4 angled cuts above, and at this size I certainly only see 3 angles, for example. (Or maybe 2 angles and a curve.)
Maybe if a zoom/enlarge feature were added to the website for the craft pictures and instructional photos it would eliminate some of those problems. I know for me it would.
Martha's craft ideas generally seem to be lacking in good instructions. It is very disappointing to see something you would like to make and then have little or no instructions.
The instructions assume you have basic crafting knowledge. Larger pictures would help but the flower is lovely even if it is not exactly like the model.
strange that all of my comment did not appear! don't know what i did
sadly, directions
Martha, too frequently your directions and diagrams are unclear and incomplete: not only for the cherry blossoms but for many of your "ideas" ,
the pic i refer to is the unfinished and still folded blossom!
yeah, it seems the directions are not complete - I really WISH they would make these pics so you can click on them to make them bigger - they never show enough detail for me!!!
um. not sure but I *think* you're supposed to cut a small rectangle (three sided only) down at the bottom of the 'cone' on each side to produce small rectangular holes. if you look at the pic closely it appears there are several small rectangular holes within the petals of the blossoms.
Number 5 direction is unclear and vague.
Number 5 direction is unclear and vague.
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I like your variation, CraftTestDummies! Sounds like something I can accomplish in 10 minutes or less! :-)
I like your variation, CraftTestDummies! Sounds like something I can accomplish in 10 minutes or less! :-)
es muy bonito y muy facil de hacer, aunque no hablo ingles trato de entender las instrucciones y usos estas ideas con mis estudiantes pues soy maestra de arte en panama, gracias
OK, I'm a lazy crafter... I bought some deep-discount silk flowers, pulled them apart, and then hot-glued them on. Gonna stick the whole arrangement in my fabric-covered bucket from a few days ago!-Jenny at CraftTestDummies.com
This is a great project and is different from the flower arrangements which other people have!! I did the same with regular tissue paper and did some shsding with marker pens for the petals. leaves were cut with painted cub food bags and assembled on the branches from the backyard. Everything came out so beautiful and is appreciated by evryone!!
mercie madamme martha je vous encourage de tout mon coeur ce modelle est tres beau fellicitation.thank you
This was such a great project. I too, used tissue paper and just hot glue gunned them onto branches from my yard. It was a stunning centerpiece...and it cost about 2 bucks to make - tissue paper from the dollar store, free branches and rocks that I put in the vase so it didn't topple over :P
This was fun and easy. We used left over tissue from my daughters birthday party and rolled yellow tiny balls for the pollen and glued them in the middle, her addition. I know real cherry blossoms aren't yellow in the middle, but this looked lovely as a center piece during Easter time and two seven year old girls could make the flowers themselves.