Napkin Rose tutorial

You will need the following supplies:

• floral wire, you can buy it in 18" lengths like mine
• floral tape
• Napkins ( not the cheap kind you get for less than a dollar!  got mine at Target)
• for napkin rose only: brads/paper fasteners & small 1/2"-1" flowers
• Optional: old  greenery for the leaves  (I buy the cheap bunches of flowers at the dollar store and then take them apart for other crafts, use the leaves for this craft)

First cut out circles.  Lots of them.  I have a 2 1/2" circle punch that I use for paper roses but it's not advisable to use it with napkins because it will dull the blade.  However, after using it to punch some paper circles you can then use one of the circles as a pattern for the napkins. 

First, I am going to show you how I make napkin roses.  I already have some circles cut out,...some of them have Xs and Os because we used stamps on them for a Valentine's Banquet a few years ago.  Which leads me to another great idea: you can stamp any design you want onto the napkin/paper before making them into roses.  The options are endless if you use your imagination!

Here's a picture of my circles cut from red napkins:

Next, put brad through center of small flower and attach floral wire to brad by wrapping it around brad and then folding the bradfasteners down over wire.  It will look like this:

front

back: can you see the wire wrapped around the brad, then the fasteners are folded down?

Now, we are ready to start adding petals.  Take the first petal, a circle you have already cut, and fold the bottom 1/2 around the wire, placing the flower in the center.  Like this:

Wrap petal around wire like this and begin attaching with floral tape.

To use floral tape, cut or tear off a lenghth of tape.  Wrap tape around petal and wire while pulling taught.

If you don't pull/stretch the floral tape a little as you wrap it, it won't cling. If you've never used it before, you may want to practice a little.  After the petal is attached securely and you have wrapped the floral tape around the wire a few times, cut or tear tape and begin adding more petals.

I added 2 this time.

Continue adding petals in the same fashion; 1 or 2 at a time,  wrap the bottom portion of the circle around the stem of the rose and then attach using floral tape.

Here's my progress:

This is about as big as you can go with this process. It is fine to stop here and make several this size.  They are very cute; about 3"-4" in diameter.  However, if you want a bigger rose, which I do, you will have to:                                                 cut a few 5" lengths of the floral wire and start making individual petals to add to the rose.  So, with my first 5" length of floral wire I made a 1/4" loop at the end and then attached 2 petals using the same method we have been using floral tape.  (If you don't make the loop at the end of the wire before attaching the petal it will slide right off!)  I made 6 petals like this.

Here is what they look like:

Now, we will add each one of these individual petals to the rose using floral tape.  Just place the petal where you want it, align the stem of the petal with the stem of the rose and attach with floral tape.  Easy peasy. 

adding a petal on it's own stem

here is the back of the rose after I added 4 petal stems, almost done!

and this is the front after adding 4 petal stems

I initially intended to add only 6 of these individual petal stems, but I am adding a few more to make the rose more full.  Here's mine after adding 10 petal stems:

almost done, needs leaves

use old greenery or cut leaf shapes from green mulberry paper
I used leftover leaves from old greenery
attach to indivdual wires like we did the petals



cut excess wires

if you want the rose to have a long stem (for a vase) wrap all of stem with floral wire
if you don't need a long stem, cut it off at desired length and wrap accordingly

here's the finished rose

And here it is displayed on my mantle:

What do you think?