A Rose Made From Recycled VHS Tape | Quick & Easy Flower Bouquet | Orange & Black Halloween DIY

In a previous Instructable I made use of some of the parts of a VHS tape, and I have been thinking about how I can use the actual ribbon tape inside the cassette for a while now.

I have seen people knit and crochet with it, and even weave with it, but I wondered if I could make it into sheets so that I could then form the sheets into other objects.

This lead me to the following project, where I joined togther tape and contact paper to form sheets of shiny black material, and then made this into a rose.

Since I like the way orange goes with black at Halloween, I thought I would then make a few super-quick orange flowers to go alongside it. Halloween bouquet sorted!

I hope you enjoy this DIY :)

Step 1: What You Will Need

- A VHS tape, a screwdriver and some clear contact paper; if you don't want to use a VHS tape, feel free to make the rose from any other suitable material e.g. regular paper, book pages, metallic paper, vellum etc. It's the same method for any material.

- Orange crepe paper; again, you only need this if you want to make the orange flowers shown above.

- Scissors

- Pen/pencil; a metallic pen is also useful if you are working with dark coloured materials. I used a silver Sharpie.

- Vase

- Gloves; I used gloves to work with the VHS tape as a precaution as I read that it can be toxic if black dust comes off it. I used fairly new tape so it hadn't started to disintegrate into dust or anything, but better to be on the safe side!

- Ruler

- Wire; I used 1.6mm aluminium craft wire which is very easy to manipulate

- Wire bending/cutting tools; wire cutters and shaping pliers required

- Glue; I used a general purpose superglue and a PVA-type glue

- A scrap piece of paper

Step 2: Find the Ribbon Tape Spool

Make sure the VHS has been rewound so that all of the ribbon tape is on one spool.

Then use a screwdriver to remove the 5 screws and pull the spools out of the case. Cut the ribbon to leave you with just one spool that has all the ribbon tape wound onto it.

Step 3: Prepare the Contact Paper

I cut a piece off the roll of contact paper that was approximately A4 sized.

It'll curl up and be difficult to keep flat, but then once you remove the backing paper and place the contact paper sticky-side up, it flattens out easily.

Step 4: Cover the Contact Paper

Next, you simply cut lengths of video tape that are just a bit wider than the contact paper piece.

Stick the lengths of tape all over the contact paper so that they slightly overlap and all of the contact paper is covered.

This produces a sheet of shiny black material.

Step 5: Wire Stems

Cut the wire to the lengths you want the stems to be.

I cut mine too long at first as I originally wasn't intending to put them in a small bud vase to display. You can always cut the wire stems down to size later on, so don't worry if they're on the long side now.

Then use pliers to add a small little loop at one end of each piece of wire.

Step 6: Super Quick Crepe Paper Flowers

This step is for the orange crepe paper flowers. I'm showing the steps using white paper as it's a bit clearer to see.

First, you simply cut a circle out of the paper - I cut mine freehand without a template as they don't have to be perfect circles. Mine were around 4" across.

Cut the circle into a spiral, making sure the outer strip width is narrower than the inner strip of the spiral. This is because the outer sections of the spiral will form the inner sections of the flower.

I wouldn't draw directly on the crepe paper because you'll then have marks on your flower, so it's best to do it freehand with scissors.

Then start rolling the flower, starting at the outer edge and working your way inwards. Feel free to cut any bits of paper off as you go if they don't look right.

Then use a little glue on the centre of the spiral and stick it onto the rest of the flower to finish. Feel free to unroll the flower before you glue for a looser look if you prefer.

Then I take a wire stem and feed it down through the centre of the flower, so that the wire loop sits at the base of the flower. And that's it!

If you prefer, you can then glue crepe paper strips or wrap floral tape around the stem to cover the wire.

Step 7: Make the Rose Template

Cut a square out of a piece of regular paper. Mine was 4" across.

Fold in half diagonally. Then fold in half again, along the centre point. And then fold in half again along the centre point.

Then cut an arc shape across the open end, as shown. Try and make a symmetrical shape so that when you open the paper out again it looks like a flower.

Step 8: Cut Out the Rose Pieces

Cut a little hole in the centre of the paper template (where all the folds meet).

Draw around the paper template, onto the video tape sheet, three times. And also mark the centre of each of these flower shapes. I used a silver Sharpie for this.

Then cut the pieces out, making sure to cut just inside the lines so you don't have pen marks on the finished flower.

Then on one flower, cut a 3-petal section out by cutting towards the centre point. Then cut a 2-petal section out of another flower, and a 1-petal section out of the final flower.

Step 9: Form the Flower Parts

I then superglued each of the 6 shapes into cone shapes - by adding glue over the area of one petal and wrapping the pieces up to join the sides/edges together.

For the smaller pieces, you’ll have to add glue just to the edge of the pieces before wrapping. The smallest piece will end up just as a narrow pointed cone.

Step 10:

Note: If you're using regular paper instead of tape/contact paper to make this rose, you can use a pencil to curl the tops of the petals outwards before assembling the flower.

Make sure each of the cone pieces has a little hole in the centre that's big enough for wire to go through. If it doesn't, just make a hole now before the next step.

Feed a wire stem through the flower pieces, from the smallest piece to the largest. I only show 5 pieces in the photo, but there should be 6!

Add a little glue at the top of the stem where there is the wire loop, then push the flower pieces upwards. Hold the wire upside-down to keep the flower pieces at the top, add a little glue where the largest piece meets the wire and then leave to dry.