Black & White Whimsy

I rescued this large vase from a San Francisco thrift store (Apologies for not having a "Before" photo, I'm still working on being a better "Before and After" photographer).  It was an awful shimmery brownish colored piece, but the shape was fun so I brought it home! I knew I wanted to do vertical stripes to play with the tall thin shape, as well as something that could be dressed up glam or playful.  This was a pretty easy refresh project, a couple coats of paint and it was better than new! 

To add some whimsy I made a couple of large paper flowers.  Having made paper flowers to cover the 8' x 11' wall in the shop I was able to pop these out fairly quickly.  There are plenty of paper flower how-to's out there, my suggestion is to watch a few videos and then just start to play around with paper.  I would recommend to start with simple printer paper as it is inexpensive and once you find a rhythm and style you like then upgrade to the pretty stuff.  

Vase measures 23" H x 10" W with an opening of 8.5" W

I made a few different templates for the styles I liked but feel free to just grab scissors and start cutting shapes (for each shape I made 3 sizes). Fresh flowers are not perfect so don't worry about your paper versions being either.  I am more of a perfectionist OCD type so I traced and cut each petal...after about 1/3 of my large wall was covered and the grand opening was approaching the templates became less important. :-) 

For the the flowers in the vase I bought a couple of wood dowels from the hardware store and took the white plastic tape I had on hand. Curl the petal edges, just a simple roll with your hands works great, wrap around the dowel and secure with the tape.  Continue to layer the petals until you have the size you like.

I'll leave y'all with a photo of the large wall.  Stop by and see it in person! 

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