Tutorial: A bouquet of paper hyacinths
Daniel came home from school a few weeks ago clutching a little bouquet of flowers he proudly presented to me. They were super-easy to make, as he showed me, and you can make a lot of creative decisions to make this project your own - size, color, type of paper, etc. I tried lengthening the flowery part and they came out looking like hyacinths (or some other similar type flower - I'm not really good with flower names, so if you can help me out here please do!)
Begin with two pieces of paper, one for your flower and one for the stem. Any size, as long as it's roughly square.
Start rolling up the stem paper as tightly as you can into a little paper roll. Secure with tape. I cut my stems in half to get two stems out of one piece of paper, but you can leave it as is, of course.
Take your piece for the flower and fold it in half, then fold in half again, or else fold into thirds. Really, you can fold any way you like, as long as you have some closed-fold sides to cut into later.
Daniel folded his like the picture above, but to get the hyacinth look, I found it was helpful to fold like the picture below - into thirds, slightly uneven, with two closed folded edges on the same side.
Begin cutting through those closed folds at intervals, but not all the way to the other side, just like the photo below. Keep on cutting till you reach the end.
Now, attach one end to your stem with some tape, and then begin rolling, moving ever so slightly down the stem as you do so. Secure the end with tape.
If you use tissue paper the petals will fall gracefully; depending on the thickness of the construction paper you use you might want to tease out some of the petal layers. Other than that, you're done. Make a whole bunch and put them together in a small vase by a window - so pretty!
This last photo is of the bouquet Daniel brought to me - I love how child-friendly and quick this project is.