White and Paper Roses

I have a serious case of blogger ADD.  Does that happen to you to?  I started out with good intentions of staying focused on my "to do" list and totally got sidetracked by these book-page roses.   I hopped over to Under the Table and Dreaming and saw Stephanie Lynn's gorgeous wreath.

Stephanie Lynn made a faux curled rosewood wreath using a book page technique.  I used the same rose, but instead made a sphere.  She has excellent step by step instructions that you should look at if you want to try this.  Basically, you use three pages at a time and trim your book page(s) to a square and cut a spiral out of it, using the entire area.  Then you roll from the outside of the ring to the inside and seal with hot glue.

I glued them onto a plastic baseball that I had in my craft stash.  I was going to whip up three spheres and put them in my cloche, but, here comes a Crafter's Warning:  Each rose takes quite awhile to make, I worked on this one sphere over the course of two days.  My hand got fatigued from the cutting and rolling.

Stephanie Lynn did not specify how wide she made her strips.  I found I liked working with just shy of 1/2" wide.  After a couple of spirals, I just free cut them since I couldn't seem to cut on the lines nor draw them very well. 

On the up side, it assisted in giving me a direction for this tablescape.  I'm just getting all of the Christmas clutter out, yes, I said it, and the table was bare.

Another benefit from hand cramps making roses is Strapping Lad sat down and had breakfast (about 11 a.m., I think) and we had a nice conversation about WOW (World of Warcraft, for the uninitiated) that we would not have had.  As he was getting up to go, Healthy Chick came down for her breakfast and sat and talked to me about ordering supplies to make her own lotions and cosmetics.  So, I got to spend some nice time with my college children.

Yes, that is a chandelier shade skeleton from which I ripped the fabric. 

I think my rose sphere turned out really interesting looking (in a good way, not in an I-was-insane kind of way).  If there were gaps too small to be filled by a full rose, I rolled a rose using just one piece of paper.  At no time did I ever start smoking them.

Tray Makeover

Antique Book and Book Wreath

Alpha Balls

Button Sphere

I'm linking with these sweet ladies: