Brown Paper Bag flowers

Repurposed ANYTHING to decorate a house or for Storage and Organisation is a better thought to reduce the making of new items and also to reduce the harmful exposure to environment. Brown paper bags have become purposefully famous these days. They have also been popular with the earth-friendly people and societies, Specially paper bags that have been made from trees of the sustainable forests, by planting a tree on cutting a tree.

Paper bags made from used newspapers can also be utilised as shopping bags, lunch bags, sometimes dry trash bags, ....here we are using brown paper shopping bags to make simple large flowers for wall decoration. You may already have enough bags at home, or you need to wait until you collect sufficient number of bags.....a medium size shopping bag, ( i have used Trader Joes brown paper bags) , makes 2 large flowers or more if flower size reduces.

Marking the petals: On the printed side of the brown paper bag, with a light pencil, mark each petal of the flower in basic shape. The bottom layer petals will be larger in size, for a 3 -layer flower. And so total number of petals can be between 12-13. Top layer has 3-4 smaller petals, middle layer has double the number, the bottom layer has triple the number of the top layer.

Glueing Together:  Once you finish cutting the marked petals, you can slightly fold each petal vertically to create a 3D effect, or even draw more details using a brown marker. Now, with the top layer, start glueing the petals together..., for the middle layer, insert a petal between every two petals of the top layer and glue them together. Similarly for the bottom layer. Make a small ball with the scrap brown paper and glue to the center of the flower as a bud. Glue each flower to a small cardboard piece for strength. Let all the glued pieces dry completely. You can even With a florist wire, make a small hook by inserting through a small hole to the cardboard piece. It is now ready for hanging.

I just ddnt want to trash my treasured brown paper bags, though they were piling up, so i came up with this idea.....people have been asking me..its so easy to teach others too !!

- Prathyusha Talluri