Ingrid, from the blog Ing-Things and author of the books Vive la Vie, Kringloopgeluk (Recycled Happiness) and Huis, tuin en keukenkleurboek (House, garden and kitchen coloring book) has made a tutorial for our Paper Lovers Week on how to brighten up your home or a dull corner of your office. See how she uses beautiful, colored paper to create a true work of art (and with her instructions, you can too).
As it’s still winter, the branches of the trees are still bare, and this certainly has its own charm, but there are days when everything is so gray and cold, that I long to be able to look at lush leafy trees.
It therefore seemed like a fun idea to do something with paper sheets, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. In my experience, a good idea naturally comes to mind when I’m busy doing something else, so as I was staring out the window at the trees and their bare branches, I suddenly saw them in full bloom.
You can also make this tutorial with the paper from The Flow Book for Paper Lovers, still available in our web shop.
This is how you make the leaves
- Fold a piece of paper in half
- Draw the outline of half a leaf and cut it out
- Fold the leaf slantwise three times (top right)
- Next, open the leaf out (easy, isn’t it?)
Stick the leaves in a large circle on the wall using adhesive poster putty.
Use some (self-)patterned masking tape to make a tree trunk.
So I made a tree of my own, and I cut out some leaves for it. This tree has a diameter of about 40cm (approx. 16in), and you’ll need at least 100 leaves for that. When cutting the leaves out, you can simply lay several sheets of paper on top of each other. Folding them is a nice, undemanding job.
You can stick the leaves onto the wall, using adhesive poster putty. The advantage of this is that you also can easily take it off the wall, just like the masking tape I used to make the tree trunk. The tree is now up on my wall, and it cheers me up when I look at it as it reminds me that spring itself is coming soon.
If you want to place a chair (or several) under the tree, you can easily make one (I learnt how to do this when I was a toddler). Preferably, you should use stiff paper as this ensures it will stand well. I once made one from an old postcard, but some of the paper or dividers in the Flow Book for Paper Lovers or Flow Magazine are ideal.
- Take a square of paper that is 9 x 9cm (3.5 x 3.5in). Using a pencil, mark it into nine equal sections of 3 x 3cm (approx. 1.18 x 1.18in)
- Cut along the two top and the two bottom slits (as shown in the dotted white lines, top left)
- Fold all the sections in the directions of the arrows (top right)
- Stick the squares over each other, as shown bottom left
- Using a small pair of sharp scissors, cut a small square out of each side to create the legs of the chair
I wish you lots of fun making your tree, and of course dreaming about the perfect spring day. Ingrid!
