DIY Wedding – Paper Flower Place Cards
Neither Mike nor I are greatly interested in flowers. We both appreciate nice arrangements but have no skill or desire to arrange flowers ourselves. So when considering ideas for centerpieces, we searched for non-traditional alternatives. We wanted to be creative and considered it a bonus that anything else would likely be less expensive than a typical floral arrangement.
I remembered the sewing paper flowers and Mike was on-board with a paper flower arrangement, so I dug up some patterns from my mother's sewing stash - for free! After making a dozen or so and putting them in the vase, we weren't thrilled with the look, and we didn't get much enthusiastic support when we bounced the idea around with friends and family. We both knew that we liked them and wanted to use them somehow, but we were no longer thinking we'd use them as centerpieces at each table.
As Mike was holding a flower and thinking, he started bending it and ended up making it stand by itself on the wire base. Aha! I knew we had to add paper leaves to write guests names on them and use the flowers as place cards. As important as it is to plan ahead, it's sometimes just as helpful to be open to spontaneous ideas! We coordinated the color of the leaves with the dinner choices (blue for chicken, brown for ravioli, and white for children or allergens) and spent four nights with wonderful family and friends making 250 of them!
To DIY you'll need:
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| Sewing Patterns | Bark wrapped floral wire 12" for each flower (we got ours from JoAnn Fabric) |
Here are the 10 steps:
1) Fold or stack sewing patterns until they are 10 sheets thick
2) Trace a circle using a can or anything circular 3-4"in diameter (We used a smaller circles for the child place cards to add some extra dimension and fun.)
3) Cut out the circle and use a paper clip to hold the pieces together
4) Cut two slits 1/2" apart in the middle of the circle
5) Take a 12" section of bark covered floral wire and bend it 180° two inches from the end
6) Slide the wire through the two slits in the cricle
7) Wrap the wire around itself so it's tight against the sewing pattern
8) Crumple the layers of sewing pattern in, one layer at a time, starting with the top. Crumpling is most important at the base of the flower, pinching the paper at the base worked well for us.
9) Bend the floral wire so there's a loop in the middle (a resting place for the leaf) and the bottom makes a half circle.
10) Slide a name tag onto the stem so it sits in the loop you bent.
Warning: Paper burns! Luckily we didn't have any serious mishaps with the flammable flowers, but we did have a few guests intentionally and accidentally burn their flowers in the candles.
Like this idea? Check out our other DIY Wedding posts!
