Atlas Roses

 Awhile back I made some poppy type paper flowers out of the pages of an old book for our porch.

It is one of my favorite projects that I have ever created.  Since the nursery has a vintage travel theme,  I decided to duplicate this project using an old atlas instead of just a regular book.  I once again used my Silhouette to cut out the flower parts.  The shape I used was 3D Catalina Tea Rose from the Silhouette Design Store.  It took lots of playing around with the settings on the Silhouette to get it to cut right and your settings will depend on the thickness of the page that you are using.

My mat was not very sticky at all so I used some painters tape just to make sure the pages would stay in place while cutting.

Once the pieces were cut I place them in order from biggest to smallest.

Then, starting with the biggest piece, I used a wooden skewer to curl the petals.

I used a glue gun to attach each piece starting from largest to smallest.

After gluing all of the pieces, I fluffed and adjusted the petals until I got the rose to look the way that I wanted it to.

I then took a piece of floral wire and wrapped a bit of floral tape around it making sure to leave a bit of wire exposed at the end.

I poked a hole through the rose and then put the exposed end of the wire through.  The floral tape will keep the rose from sliding down.  Sorry for the out of focus picture.  It was really hard to take a picture of this step!

I didn't use the center pieces that were part of the design from the Silhouette store because they were too delicate to be cut successfully.  Instead I cut a strip of the atlas page and cut it into little grass like pieces and then wound it around the wire and glued it in place with the glue gun.

I made three roses total for the tiny vase.  I found the antique silver "vase"at a local second hand store called Heirlooms.  I believe it is actually a candle stick holder but it was perfect for my three little roses.

I placed it on the little floating shelf in the nursery along with some frames that are now filled (more on that in another post), an antique perfume bottle and a Peter Rabbit music box that my Grandma Charlotte gave to me when I was a child.  I just love this project and I hope that you do too!