Paper Roses Made From Book Pages How To

diy paper flowers

I’m of two minds on these roses, on the one hand they look awesome, on the other I’m not sure I agree with destroying books to make them… I’m not sure what it is about books that makes them sacred, but there is something about them that makes defiling them a cardinal sin. That said destroying a mass produced art work to create a unique one is okay isn’t it?

If you are Lazy you can just buy them on Etsy but I’ve copied the instructions here just in case the source link goes down for whatever reason.

diy paper flowers

Craft Supplies:
Paper
Grosgrain Ribbon, ½ Width cut to 4 inch lengths
16 Gauge Wire cut to 15 inch lengths
Glue Gun
Glue Sticks (low temp)
Scissors
Wire Cutters

Step 1: Gather materials. If you are using vintage books or sheet music as your paper source make sure it is still flexible enough to curl with your fingers. The wire can be found at the hardware store, and is sometimes called “black wire” or “annealed coil wire.” Be sure you are using low temp hot glue because you’ll be able to feel it right through the paper petals as you work.

diy paper flowers

Step 2: Cutting. You will need to stockpile at least 5 different sizes of petals ranging from about ¾ inch wide to 3 inches wide. I cut freehand, and avoid templates, so that each petal is a unique and organic shape. Think of the shapes as little church windows or arches. Some can be pointy, and some can be rounded. For each flower you will need at least 4 of each size. Make more than you need.

Step 3: Shaping. I really feel that this is the most important step to create natural and soft looking flowers. Roll the edges of each petal, and pinch the base slightly. Each one can be done a little differently to give the petals character and roundness. I shape all of my petals before I even begin gluing anything.

diy paper flowers

Step 4: Rolling the center. You need to cut out one more shape for each flower, and this is for the coiled center of the rose. This shape should be about 2 ½ inches long with a rounded tip. Roll it up into a tube to create its shape. Unroll it and run a bead of hot glue along the inside and re-roll it around the end of your wire. Another dot of glue will hold it in place.

Step 5: Attaching petals. Begin with your smallest petals. Use a single dot of glue, about ¼ inch from the bottom of the petal to attach it to the stem. Your next petal should overlap the first. Continue adding small petals, rotating the stem as you go, always slightly overlapping the last petal you attached. This is where your artistry will come in as you continue to rotate and build. As you begin adding larger petals pinch the bases, as they are much wider. By pinching at the bases you will be rounding out the rose, and creating space between layers.

Step 6: Finishing. The sepals will be made of ribbon, which will also cover your final seams and create a nice polished look. Each rose needs two – 4 inch lengths of ribbon. Wrap them around the stem and secure to the undersides of the petals. Cut a ‘V’ into each end of the ribbons to finish.

diy paper flowers

Via 100 Layer Cake

Clever Email Marketing From Pizza Express Using HTML

If you use a sensible email client you will probably have noticed that most of your emails will not initially load when images, this is great for the user, it speeds up the process of downloading all your mail and means you can skim through your mail without having to wait ages for images you don’t care about to load.

This isn’t however very good for email marketers who use images to convey information to you. I’m sure you are used to receiving a lot of emails that make no sense because they don’t have any images in them. It seems that Pizza Express (A UK Pizza Restaurant Chain) have cottoned on to the fact that not everyone downloads all the images from their correspondence emails, so they have taken to formatting the emails quite cleverly, this is what an email I received today looks like without the images having loaded:

You can clearly see that it’s someone in a stripy costume holding up their hand to their hair (or maybe a pizza?) Below that there are details of the offer and how to get a voucher code in plain text.

Once you load images this is what the email looks like:

It’s a blonde woman in a stripy swimsuit holding up her hair. Looking at the image it’s obvious that the non image version is based on  this, the graphics in the non table version maybe reminiscent of an Atari 2600 game but they convey the same details as the image version, and they make you stop and think, I wonder what that is supposed to be maybe I’ll download the images.

So I guess their cunning ruse worked. I downloaded their images, I’ve also subjected you to their cunning advertising…