Crepe Paper Forsythia Branches

An artist I follow posted a gorgeous picture of forsythia blooms she'd forced. It left me yearning for forsythia and nowhere to get any. She teased me that she couldn't encourage poaching other people's and that kids used to make them by adding tissue paper to sticks.

I couldn't resist collecting fallen sticks and giving it a go. A lot of crepe paper flower instructions use better quality crepe paper than I could find locally, so this is a cheap crepe paper streamer variant!

bright yellow and bright green crepe paper

scissors

white glue

hot glue (low temp preferable)

toothpicks

a round barreled pen or pencil

sticks (clippers could be handy here)

You're probably going to need a lot of petals! These blooms work in bulk, I usually end up using a dozen or two per stem, and it's four petals per flower.

Accordion fold the yellow crepe paper so it's about 3/8" wide. From the length freehand cut a long oval petal that's about 2/3 the height of the paper and a 'stem' that's about 1/3.

Run a fine line of glue along the stem part of one petal, lay the edge of the next petal stem on top of it, then add another and another so you have a batch of 4 slightly overlapped petals glued together at the base. Let them dry.

While the flower sets dry, make a batch of pistils. You'll need one for each flower.

Cut small slices of crepe paper, also about 3/8" wide. Roll them lengthwise and twist tight.

Tie a knot towards the end of the twist. Gently tighten it.

Carefully cut the short end even with the knot.

Take a four petal bunch, curve it lengthwise in your fingers, add a bead of glue along one unattached petal stem and press the other side against it to make a flower tube.

While that dries, start cutting sepals.

Accordion fold the green crepe paper in folds about 1/2" wide. Cut the stack in half width-wise. Freehand cut a rough crown shape with a wide stem section from both halves.

Gently pinch/pleat the stem bit of the flower in a little. Slide in a toothpick so it still has a 'throat' and squish it around the toothpick.

With the toothpick still in, gently curve each petal width-wise against a pencil or pen for a slight bend outward. Even more carefully, pull the sides gently to unfold some of the creases in the crepe paper for a cupping effect. Next slightly curl each side of each petal lengthwise around a second toothpick.

Slide out the toothpick creating a throat to add the pistil.

Slide the pistil (long tail first) into the flower most of the way. The tail will stick out of the stem part of the flower. Dab some glue at the base of the throat before the stem part of the flower, then pull it through the stem part to that base.

Squish and roll the stem part of the flower between your fingers to secure it. Leave the long stem and pistil tail for now.

Now it's time to add sepals. Take one of the pieces you cut and gently stretch the center a little for a curved effect.

Put some glue around the base of the flower and the stem bit. Line up the piece so the spiky sepals are against the flower, and wrap it around the entire base. Gently twist the whole thing between your fingers to secure the glue and make it as narrow as possible.

Trim the stem/pistil tail to a stub about 1/4" long from the base of the flower.

One down, lots more to go!

Having natural sticks really helps with the illusion. Look for ones that are mostly straight or gently curved in a single direction. Days after rain or windy days are a great time to look for thinner sticks on the ground.

To get an idea of how many flowers you need, cut the stick to the length you want it in the container. Then count the number of joints between the top of the stick and the top of the container.

Forsythia blooms grow parallel to each other, so you'll probably want a pair of flowers for each joint. (If it doesn't have terribly even or noticeable joints, figure you want a pair for every 1 1/2" to 2" it sticks out of your container, depending how dense you want your blooms.)

Start by hot gluing two flowers to the top of the stick and work your way down in pairs. If the joints are fairly evenly spaced, hot glue right on top of them, if not, you can eyeball or measure your way down.

When you get down as far as you'd like, you're done.

Unfortunately, all the branches I found that were a good shape had alternating buds or branching bits. I cut them down as close as I could to the main stem.

I hot glued over the joint where I could, then put the paired flower across from it. To cover egregious holes from cutting off extra sticking out bits I'd put a dot of glue over the bare spot and press a petal against it to make sure the flower obscured it.