Welcome to the world of paper flower making!

The Posey Box challenge Kate Alarcon of The Cobra Lily to make a parrot tulip that was easy for beginners but advanced paper florists would be able to learn a new tip or two with this tutorial.

Here's Kate's message on how she came up with the March Posey Box's Parrot Tulip Tutorial.

"My first design challenge for The Posey Box was the black parrot tulip. I was already nervous following in the footsteps of Inga Peterson and her beautiful tutorials, and then I found out that my first project was going to be a flower I had never made before!

I love tulips in general, and French tulips in particular. I always assumed someday I would take on this beautiful flower with its fringy, saw-toothed petal edges—but to be honest, we are so spoiled with gorgeous tulips in my area, that I left it on the back burner. So I was happy to be pushed to finally make one! Quynh told me I could pick whichever color tulip I wanted.  I dove into Pinterest to see what was out there. I was torn between all the pinks, greens, reds, and yellows. Then I found the black parrot tulip, and I knew it was the one!I’m fairly obsessed with black (or very, very dark red) flowers. I’ve made black hollyhocks, hellebores, fritillaries, and orchids. I love the way a very dark background can show off velvety, pastel finishes and other details. When I texted a picture from Pinterest to Quynh, she said, “It’s so you! It’s perfect!” That seemed like a good sign!

The first thing I do when developing a paper flower design is to find reference images. Then I try to distill the main elements and details that I want to capture in my version of the flower. I looked at a hundred black parrot tulip photos, and three things struck me most:

1.  The “black” wasn’t just a solid color, but rather a play of black, dark reds, purples, and blues. To capture that richness, I played with adding some jewel tones to my black paper.
2. The flower head has a ton of body, with lots of petals firmly packed together. It actually kind of reminded me of a red cabbage! So although I had originally thought I would approach it with a lighter-weight paper, I decided only something as bodacious as heavy crepe would do. 
3. And of course, the petal edges! It would have been a lot quicker to just fringe all the edges and leave it at that. But the black parrot tulip has a lovely saw-tooth edge, and I thought it was worth taking the time to do that properly.

Despite my nervousness, I’m happy with how it turned out! I wired the petals so that I could pose them in various states of bloom, which is extremely fun to play with. I like how they can look elegant, romantic, or comically scraggly depending on how you curl the petals. 

For those tackling this moody flower, I have three tips to share with you: