Hi friends! I hope you’re finally getting a little hint of spring, wherever you are. The weather has been pretty nice in Nashville for the most part, but it did snow a little yesterday… yuck! Today we’re back in the 70s and life is pretty good, so I definitely can’t complain too much. If it’s still a frozen wasteland where you are – hang in there! It’ll warm up soon!
Today I’m sharing a tutorial from the Lavender + Lupine School of Magick’s newest course, The Modern Witch’s Guide to Beltane! In case you didn’t know, the L+L school is a joint effort by myself and The Witch of Lupine Hollow. We’ve created a bunch of courses designed to help you either get started on your path or breathe new life into your practice, and this year we’re making one for each Sabbat! If you’d like to enroll in the course, it’s just $15 – and here’s a little taste of what you’ll find there…
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I love decorating with flowers for Beltane, but I hardly ever have real flowers in the house – they can be pricey, I’m not good at caring for them, and they die so quickly (and then the water gets gross if you leave it for too long!) So instead, I like to make paper flowers to decorate with!
This tutorial will show you how to make watercolor flowers that look pretty realistic (at least, they CAN, if you’re better at crafts than me. But I still think mine turned out okay.) You can use them to decorate your altar, put a few in a vase, or make a pretty floral garland with them to hang in your home. These take some time to make, but the finished result is perfect for this time of year!
(I’m including a photo of the materials I used so you can see what everything looks like, but I actually wouldn’t recommend this brand of watercolors or brushes. The brushes were TERRIBLE and the watercolors… weren’t bad, but weren’t the best. My usual set of watercolors and brushes is packed away so I couldn’t get to them, but you can easily find better brushes and watercolors on Amazon or at Michael’s!)
You will need:
- 1 roll of white crepe paper
- Watercolor paints
- Watercolor paint brushes
- A cup of water
- A heat-safe bowl
- Scissors
- A glue stick
- Tape
- Floral tape
- Sticks or fake stems (optional)
1. Cut out your petals from the crepe paper. I folded it over itself several times to save myself some time. It doesn’t really matter if all of the petals are the same shape since they get wrinkly later, but you can vary the shapes if you’d like. (If you cut them all out at once but dislike the look of same-size petals, you can also trim them to different shapes and sizes later in the process.)
2. Turn your bowl over and using your paintbrush, brush some water on it towards the top – enough so that your crepe paper will stick to the bowl. Stick a petal or two onto the bowl with part of it on the bottom of the bowl and part on the side (the picture will probably clarify what I mean by this – basically we want the petals to dry in a concave shape, so we’re sticking them to the bowl in the shape we want.)
3. Dip your brush into your watercolor paints and begin painting the petals. I got the paint really watery and let it sort of drip down the petals, then went back in and painted more pigmented splotches. The paint colors will fade as they dry, so if you want bolder petals, be sure to use darker paints. I used reds, oranges, pinks, and yellows for a sunny sunset kind of vibe.
4. Go around the bowl, sticking more petals on and painting them, until you have a significant number of petals. Note that you can keep stacking the petals on top of one another and painting them, but eventually the ones at the bottom will all sort of turn one color so it’s best not to do too many layers. You can have a few different bowls of petals going at once, even if the bowls are different sizes – it’ll just make your flowers more interesting!
5. Now it’s time to dry the petals. I used a hair dryer, but you can also let them air dry. I saw online that you can microwave the bowl and the wet petals for 30-second increments until they’re dry, but I was afraid to put paint in the microwave for some reason… To each their own!
6. Once your petals are dry, it’s time to shape your flowers! Using your glue stick, gently glue your petals together in a circle. This is going to be the base of your flower, so make it bigger for bigger flowers or smaller for tiny blooms.
7. Continue gluing petals in concentric circles until you get to the middle. I think I had about 5 layers of petals on my flower, but you can do as many or as few as you’d like! I scrunched up the petals in the very middle to give it a more natural, messy look.
8. Pinch your flower together on the bottom and tape it, forming a tiny “stem.” It’s okay if your flower gets all scrunched at this stage – we’re going to fluff it out later! I used clear tape to get it to stay together, then went over it again with floral tape. It was just easier that way, but you can just use floral tape if you’d like.
9. Use the floral tape to attach your new flower to the stick or stem you’d like to put it on. I bought stems but ended up not liking the way they looked, so I left my flower off of it and ended up using it for a centerpiece that I’ll be putting on my Beltane altar.
10. Now that it’s attached (or not, as the case may be), un-scrunch your flower and open it back up! Don’t be afraid to fold the paper – real flower petals look messy and bent sometimes.
11. Repeat for as many flowers as you’d like! I’m not going to lie, this is a time-consuming way to make paper flowers – but I love the watercolor look and I think making individual petals makes them look much more real. Have fun!
If you liked this tutorial, there’s more where that came from – check out The Modern Witch’s Guide to Beltane! For just $15, you’ll have access to 12 lessons that guide you through the history, correspondences, astrology, and celebration of this fun and flowery Sabbat. We’d love to see you there!
