As the Sweetheart Valentine dance approached, my date and I decided that instead of buying corsages we would make them ourselves. We decided on crafting them out of newspaper to save a few bucks and a few trees. This build took a little under 2 hours and cost about $5 in total (the only thing I had to buy was the ribbons).

Step 1: Materials

Hot glue gun + hot glue
Scissors
Paintbrushes (one flat brush, one fan brush)

Newspaper
Wire or fake flower stems
Ribbon
Paint
Elastic
A paper plate

Fair warning: I say 'rose' and 'glue' quite a bit in the tutorial.

Step 2: Prep

Before I started, I cut out a bunch of circles in the newspaper. I choose smaller sizes so that the tiny flowers I made would look more realistic.

Step 3: Beginning the Roses

Making the roses was actually very simple. To start the swirl in the center of the rose, I took a medium petal and stuck my stem in the center. I put hot glue on one half of it and folded it down. Before the glue dried, I swirled the pedal. It's important to swirl the rose while the glue is still hot so it holds it's shape. Rmember to be careful. This project will probably result in a few burned fingers

Step 4: Adding Petals

To add the petals, I put glue on the lower part of a newspaper circle and pressed it to the base of the swirl I had made. I made sure to tilt the petals slightly outward when gluing them on.

If you look at a real rose, you'll see the middle of a rose has the petals closer together than the outside of the rose As I added the petals to the rose I made sure to follow the pattern a real rose naturally has. The roses were relatively easy to make. It just took quite a bit of time. I made four in total for my corsage.

After I finished them I cut the stem off so that I could attach it to the base of my corsage.

Step 5: Making the Base

To make the base. I measured, and cut out a piece of elastic a half inch shorter than the circumference of my wrist (so that it won't be too loose). I sewed the edges together.

Corsages have a base to hold the flowers. Because I'm a poor high school student, I made my base out of a paper plate. I cut out two rounded square like shapes out of a plate, and glued them together. I then cut slits into the paper base, and into the elastic. I threaded a ribbon through them to attach them together.

Step 6: A Little Artistic Additions

I decided to make some leaves to make my corsage a little more complex. I cut them out of newspaper, and took a bit of paint (I watered it down a bit, so that you could still see the news print), and brushed it over the leaves (making sure to coat both sides).

I took my fan brush and lightly brushed on some gold paint over the edges of two of the roses. I did the same, but with grey paint over the other two.

Step 7: Putting It All Together

If you haven't figured out yet, our color scheme was grey and gold. To keep the corsage in one place , I stuck it over two paint bottles. I glued the ribbons on first. I literally just glued them everywhere so it looked ridiculous and loopy. Then I took some leaves and added them to the flowers. I choose the place where I wanted my flowers and, glued them on. I added a couple more leaves in places that looked plain, and voila!