Halloween is fun, Christmas is exciting, but my favorite holiday of the year is mothers day because it gives me the chance to give back to my mother. I always make dinner for her, make a card, and some paper flowers.

Why don't I buy her real flowers?

Real flowers are very expensive, and only last a couple days at most if you take care of them well. Paper flowers, on the other hand, are beautiful, handmade, and last forever! On top of that, they only take a couple materials, and are very quick, on the hopefully offhand chance you didn't have the time to get something for your mother.

I thought it would be fun to make mine actually smell good, so I used essential oils, but of course, this is optional.

Step 1: Materials

For this project you'll need:

- Square paper (1 sheet per flower)

- A petal shape template cut from cardboard or cardstock

- Straws

- Glue

- Scissors

- Essential oils (optional)

- a vase or jar

-Rocks (optional)

-Cotton ball (not pictured, and also optional; for soaking essential oils and diffusing)

Step 2: Making the Flower

note: my instructions are definitely not as articulate as I would like them to be, but if you have ANY questions at all feel free to ask in the comments and I will try my best to help you!

1. First, you want to fold the square paper in half.

2. Then, eyeball as best you can, fold one of the corners over, and repeat with the other corner. Perfection isn't super important here, however, it is important that the bottom is a sharp and uniform corner (refer to white lines in picture 3)

3. Take a petal shaped template and cut it out of the triangular paper piece

4. snip a tiny corner off the bottom of the petal shape (this is the hole for your stem later on)

5. Unfold your flower, it will have 6 petals. To make our flower 3 dimensional, we will snip along the folds of one of the petals. Glue the top of the adjacent petal, and press the two sides on top of each other. Let this dry for a couple minutes.

6. To curl your petals, run the side of a pair of scissors across the petal quickly, using your thumb to hold the paper and the scissors at an angle. Repeat with all petals

Step 3: The Stem and the Filaments

The flower and fruit unit of my high school biology class was pretty rough, but I managed to remember that the part I'm recreating here is the filament of the flower, a supporting stalk that holds the anther (which holds the pollen)

Anywho,

1. Take one of your straws and snip a couple times lengthwise (in the part indicated by the pink lines in picture 1)

note that the more you snip the more filaments you are creating, so feel free to play around with it, to create a flower that you like

2. To curl each filament, we'll repeat the same technique we used to curl the petal. Grasp one filament and press it to the side of a closed pair of scissors with your thumb. Run the scissors at an angle quickly up the length and repeat with the rest.

3. Poke the stem through the hole we made in the flower

I wish I could add a gif of this process, as it is kind of hard to put in words, alas I am technologically inept :)

Step 4: Dress It Up!

After I made 6 or 7 paper flowers, I filled a tall and narrow vessel with pebbles to keep the flowers tall and straight.

To make them scented, I added a couple drops of floral essential oils diluted with water:

-6 drops lavender

-6 drops jasmine

a couple teaspoons of water

I sprayed this mixture over the petals from a distance, not to soak the paper.

I found that this method was ineffectual in retaining the fragrance, so I would recommend soaking a cotton ball in the essential oil and placing this in the 'vase', and around the base of the flowers

There you go! A fast and easy bouquet of beautiful and fragrant paper flowers ready to brighten up a dinner table or anywhere else you put it :)