You put hours of work into creating a paper flower, only to have the color start to fade after a short while.

Unfortunately, this is a situation that paper florists are very familiar with, especially with certain colors that are quite essential to creating lifelike plants. (I’m looking at you, green.)

So, how do you preserve the color of your crepe paper? Is there anything you can do to stop paper flowers from fading?

The answer is yes. I have one sure way to keep that color completely, but it might not be a medium that you prefer. In that case, there are things you can do to prevent and slow fading.

Completely Preserve Color with Acrylic

In my eight year experience as a paper artist, the only fail-safe way to maintain the color of the crepe is to paint it with acrylic. The plastic coat definitely perseveres the paper.

Especially with those certain shades of green crepe that like to quickly turn strange colors, acrylic paint is a great option. I’ve shared a list of the...

Angel Wing Begonia Tutorial 

by Quynh Nguyen of The Posey Box

There’s something adorable about the spotted leaves of an Angel Wing Begonia, which I set out to capture in my latest tutorial. 

You can adapt these techniques to make your plant as unique as you are. Give the leaves a more jagged edge, or create a redder variety. The possibilities are endless!   

But first, let’s talk about glue and paint.

I used Aleene’s Clear Tacky Glue for this tutorial, and I highly recommend it. It is so much tackier and dries super fast. I also love that it doesn’t yellow over time, which is key for long-living flowers like ours. Remember to close the cap between uses—it’s easy to forget when you’re in the middle of a project! 

The Tulip Dimensional Paint for the dots is so easy to use, and it comes in a variety of colors that you can experiment and play with. Consider mixing the colors together to get a darker or...

The dahlia mania is still going strong here at The Posey Box, and we brought in a real, live dahlia expert to help you make your paper flowers even more lifelike! Last week, we invited Jesalyn Pettigrew to chat with our members about this colorful, amazing flower, and we loved every minute of it.

First of all, a little about Jesalyn. She is a single mom to two young boys, and in 2015 she founded Mossy Gate Flower Farm. She started her garden on just 50 square feet, using it to help with a difficult life transition—I know many of you paper florists came to our craft for similar reasons and understand well the joy that creating can bring. 

Jesalyn’s hobby soon grew into a passion, and even though gardening and farming weren’t in her wheelhouse, she learned the ins and outs of the wholesale cut flower farm industry. She now farms over two acres and is the first flower farm for the Puget Sound Food Hub Coop, is a founding member of Genuine Skagit Valley, and was...

Dahlias are one of the most interesting flowers to make from paper. They come in so many drastically different varieties, ranging from very tiny delicate balls to bold flowers the size of dinner plates. Some look like colorful fireworks, others like sea creatures and still others like a honeycomb. One of the reasons for all this diversity of form is actually in the dahlia’s genes. Most plants have two sets of chromosomes. Dahlias have eight. This allows for more genetic combinations and variations, which is why cultivars of the same flower can vary so dramatically.

That jewel-like color and luster of dahlia petals also have a scientific explanation.

The visual intensity is partly to compensate for the fact that dahlias don’t attract pollinators using scent but only color. While a rose might lure a bee by using a sweet perfume, a grassy-smelling dahlia must rely on its good looks.

To tackle this amazing paper flower tutorial, I left the blooms to Quynh. She has...

I have a confession to make: I had actually never created a large flower wall-piece before I developed this month’s Itoh peony tutorial. Kind of embarrassing for someone who has been making paper flowers for over ten years. So I was a little bit unsure when I began designing my version, luckily with some helpful tips from Quynh, The Posey Box founder and CEO. 

Since Quynh was offering her spectacular heavy crepe peony, I decided to use doublette for mine to add variety to our projects. By itself, the doublette can be a little floppy and delicate when the petals need to be very large, so I laminated it, which made the flower much more sturdy.  

As I started to assemble my mock-up, I noticed that the layers had a subtle watercolor paper quality that I loved against the dramatic center. So I added a wash of color to the petal edges, and it pulled the whole project together. 

I’m proud of my colorful peony, but Quynh’s spectacular cloud of petals...