alpine flowers at Grey Rock

Monday, December 20, 2010

Paper Poinsettias


Someone gave me a bag of this rolled paper to make some craft items and bows out of.  I found myself a bit bored watching football yesterday and started this project to decorate jars of jam I am giving away as presents. I only used red and a mossy green string of paper, but you could add pink petals or different green leaves if you wish. Unroll the paper to get some sheets to work with.  Cut petals from the red, some larger ones 5 or 6, and some smaller ones for the middles of the flowers.  Leave stems on the ends of the petals to wrap together when making the flowers.  Cut some leaves from the green and make oak leaf shapes to imitate poinsettia's leaves.  I only had 4 leaves per flower.  My flowers were small to go on the jars, but you could make some life-size ones if you wanted, might even be a little easier.  Gather the petals like a bouquet twisting together the stem ends.  Add leaves to the outside and a sheet of green to cover the whole group twisting some more to hold the whole thing together.  It is a little tricky until they seem to come together at the last minute.  I used quite a bit of gold glitter glue to make the middles and then added green glittler glue to the leaves.  For the next flower, I put the green glitter glue on before I built my flower, a good idea.  You could also accent the red petals with red glitter glue something I haven't tried yet, but the day is young! Wire together and use wire ends to attach for tree decoration, package topping, or to place in bouquet.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Winter garden

I have a few lettuce heads, spinach, a few carrots, and broccoli, kale, and chard left in the greenhouse, well until some animal breaks in to rob me.  So far, so good, though, as I just put the berry fencing in front of the doors and that seems to be enough to keep anyone from challenging the doors.  The tissues are weak as they have survived 20 degrees and warm days over this last weekend, but the carrots are super sweet.  I also have some parsnips, but they are still pretty small.  May have to harvest some to roast whole soon, just to give them a try.  Supposedly they turn very sweet (probaly like the carrots, huh?)after a freeze, and they have certainly had that!