I love Pelargonium flowers! Absolutely love them! Probably it is a kind of inherited addiction of the women in our family. Every one of us has always had a strong passion to grow different types and colours. In my childhood, all the terraces were full of pots with Pelargoniums, now my home’s balcony is full of their bright heads, as is my sister’s home too. I am telling you, this is a family addiction.
A few years ago, I decided to find all possible colours of Pelargonium. All the reds, whites, pinks and oranges were no problem to buy and grow. But the yellow one – no. It is apparently the most rare. All the flower shops I tried, including online ones, didn’t have it. I signed up to lots of waiting lists, until one day I decided, while waiting, just to make one for myself.
The flower head of Pelargonium
There are different ways, of course, but the easiest is with crepe paper. I promise, that later I will show you another one – with watercolour paper. But for now – follow these steps.
First, cut some little rectangles and make small petals with the shape shown. I am using not bright white paper, but pink. First it doesn’t “burn” on the photos and second the pink base gives me the possibility to easily add more colour nuances later.
I prefer colouring the petals with the Watercolour marker technique, but you can use acrylic paint or pastels. The problem is that even the best quality crepe paper fade with time, so this water-colouring is an experiment. How long will the colours survive? Let’s see…
When the petals are ready, I glued them on a piece of paper wire.
Because the Pelargonium flower heads look a little bit like Hydrangea flower heads, I had to make a lot of petals and glue them to a lot of little wires. Or at least not less than 7 wires with not less than 7 petals each.
Some of the flowers I made open, some of the flowers I made more closed, to give a more realistic look to the flower.
After that I connected all the wires together into one flower head.
The leaves
If the time to make the petals made you a bit nervous, you’ll find that the leaves will be fast and easy. For this project, I am using factory coloured paper to which I will add more nuances again with watercolour markers. If you are doing this flower only as an experiment or for temporary use only, it is ok to use industrial coloured crepe paper. In all other cases, I suggest colouring your paper with acrylic paint.
It is better to colour the petals after you cut and glue the shapes, not in this step.
For one Pelargonium leaf, I cut 3 rectangular pieces of green crepe paper…
… and shape two of them as shown in the picture.
The third petal I cut in two parts…
…to make the edges of the curly Pelargonium leaf.
Then glue all the parts together like sewing textile pieces.
The result must be something like this.
After this I glued all the long leaf pieces around a paper wire “stem”.
Not too tight so it’s possible to open the leaf later.
For a small plant with only one flower head I made only 3 leaves like this.
Final touches
As I said before, I used some green water and alcohol-based markers to give more nuances to the leaves and to make them look more realistic.
After that I connected everything together – the flower head and the leaves, using a thin “ribbon” from the same green crepe paper.
Then opened the leaves and adjusted the flowers to look like a real plant. In this process I tore one of the green leaves.
Don’t worry if something like this happens to you too. Just cut the paper, following the line of the tear. Actually, this can make the leaf look more realistic.
And your crepe paper Pelargonium is ready.
Now you need only some soil or sand and little pot to “plant” it.
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