DIY : Decorative Floral Rose Ball

A month into Valentine's day. yet roses are in all year round. Which is why Itsy Bitsy India came up with this appropriately named challenge Itsy Bitsy Say It With Roses Challenge. I was debating with myself since the challenge was announced - I knew I wanted to be a part of it, but I wasn't sure how. That is, until I came across this wonderful DIY by Geneva @ A Pair and A Spare and bam! - I knew what I loved :)

I also had the following constraints if I were to go for my own version

• I wanted something permanent
• I did not want to spend more than my set limit
• I wanted it to go with my living room
• I did not want real flowers to die (I'm weird that way)

So I decided to do my version with paper flowers, thermocol balls and leftover wallpaper.

Here's what you'll need to do this version:

• A thermocol ball about 14 cm in diameter
• Wallpaper (can be replaced by any craft paper of your choice)
• Super Glue (or E6000)
• Craft Glue (or Fevicol)
• Drawing pins (I used 28 mm ones)
• Scissors
• An old CD (optional)
• Yarn (optional)

Step 1: Use the CD to draw circles on the back of the wallpaper and cut them out. To cover 1 ball you'll need to have around 40 circles.

Step 2: Cut into the circular shapes spirally, ensuring that all the circles are cut with the same thickness. To add the little edge to the flowers, you can cut imperfectly into the circles (yay!)

Step 3: Start rolling the paper inwards from the edge up till you reach the center, which becomes the base. Glue with quick-drying super glue The gold color comes inside the roll. For a detailed tutorial on how to make rolled paper roses, see here and here. Continue rolling all the spirals up till you get a bunch of paper roses that look like this.

Step 4: Take about a meter of cotton yarn and wrap it around you index and middle finger. Remove after wrapping and you will have a yarn "O" with you. With craft glue, press this "O" vertically onto the thermocol ball and hold down with clear tape. This is to provide an arrangement for hanging the ball later. You can skip this step if you don't plan to hang it.

Step 5: Diagonally opposite to the yarn, put a 2-3 drops of craft glue and place the base of a rose. Push a drawing pin through the center of rose into the thermocol to hold the rose down. Allow to dry.

Step 6: Continue gluing and pinning roses close to each other from bottom up until the whole ball is covered. Leave to dry overnight.

You can even paint on the back of the wallpaper for interesting effects :)

Hang them around your home to enjoy interesting personalized decor!

If you like this DIY, you can vote for my entry in the Itsy Bitsy Say It With Roses Challenge, Jade Eclectic : DIY: Decorative Floral Rose Ball

Thank you in advance ;)