i heart duke

I read a book once called the Girl in the Wall. It gives new meaning to the idea of a wallflower. The girl in the story is so shy that one day she disappears and begins to live in the tunnels between the walls of her house. She only comes out at night to eat and sew her own clothes because even her family scares her. Then one day she discovers a note from a boy who is visiting and she begins to write back whenever he comes over. When she finally leaves the tunnels of her wall, her family mistakes her for a stranger and she turns out to be absolutely gorgeous, ofcourse. I would have gladly lived inside the walls of my house when I was younger. I guess I'll have to be content making my own wallflowers.

This is still a work in progress. It has already taken over one wall and leaked onto our ceiling. Pretty soon it will get a mind of its own and curl across the hall into our bathroom... or fridge. Who knows?

I first found the prototype for these sweet little flowers on the cutest blog, younghouselove.com. You can buy the plastic versions on umbra.com. It is about $20 for a pack of 25. I wanted some soo bad... but 25 aren't enough! So obviously the only answer was to make my own. A different version on folksy.com is closer to what I was looking for. You can get 53 for about $10. Or.... you could makemy version.
1. Fold the bottom of a piece of paper up about an inch and a half. Then fold the outside in about the same amount so it creates a square. Fold the square into a triangle so that the point is in the crease.

2. Cut the triangle into a petal shape, leaving about a quarter of an inch from the bottom of the crease uncut.

4. Unfold your flower. Boom, baby.5. Find a magazine page you like and glue the paper flower to the back of the page. Obviously, if you glue it to the front of the picture...you won't be able to see it. That doesn't work. (Oh, and Elmer's glue works the best, because it gets the paper a little wet. But use sparingly.)

6. Cut the around the flower and your magazine.

7. Because the Elmer's glue makes the flower wet and pliable, you can fold in any number of ways. Fold the petals in and curl out, or just curl in, or anything you feel like. When the glue dries the flower will be stiff (and sometimes warped, which gives it a cool look.)8. Choose a flat-backed button and glue in the center of your flower.

10. Now just hang it up with blue tacky.

It helps to have 5 roommates handy. We all jumped on board and spent a couple afternoons cutting and glueing and watching Christmas movies. So what if its November 15? If you want to make them in bulk just cut out squares of white paper and glue it to the magazines, then stack up 5 or 6 of the squares and use the flower to cut out all of them at once.