Making peonies

The first attempt. White crepe paper peony hanging from kitchen clothes airer

 My youngest is marrying in July and she wants me to make paper peonies to hang from the beams of the pub where the reception will be held.

So I looked at the pictures on Pinterest and bought lots of white crepe paper. I painted some of it pale pink with watercolour for the centres. I happened to have some big wood beads which I thought would make good centres so I tied a length of cord to these and glued the pink crepe round them and wrapped a few short layers round them too. Then I cut a petal shape with a wide base in several sizes from the crepe and individually glued these to the centre, overlapping as I went.

This is the result and although it's far from perfect, looking to me more like a gardenia or a camellia I'm moderately pleased with it. The surprise is that one peony takes up one whole pack of crepe paper. If the next ones look better (more petals needed I think) I'll show you the results in a future post. Now housework time (see how I delay it by writing another blog post....)