Squirt is having a sleepover tonight, which means I will be up until around midnight with squealing girls. In order to cope I decided to try out making plastic spoon roses. The idea is pretty simple, and it didn't take too long, so I jumped right on that.
First, I gathered everything I thought I could possibly need. Plastic spoons, a candle (tealights are all I have right now), some wire cutters, a lighter (because a candle is no good if it isn't lit), and the trusty iphone. Remember the hubs has the camera? Yeah. I apologize right now that some of these pics are pretty crappy. To start, I followed the tutorial linked above, and then I changed it.
Holding a spoon above the candle, let it get hot enough to deform and then use your fingers to mold it into a curved petal for the center of the flower.
Ooops! Don't forget you're holding something flammable whilst watching Harry Potter or you'll burn a hole clear through it!
After you've got a good looking "petal" formed from your spoon, snip the handle off. Keep melting spoons until you've got a pile of usable petals from which to meld your flower.
Now, at this point the tutorial says to heat the broken end of one rose petal until it is melting and place it where you like. The melty plastic will attach to the base of the flower and you end up with one fully connected plastic flower. This was a great idea, but I found that my petals didn't fit together as well as I'd like and trying to melt them together at the bottom ended with black, charred bits and images of spontaneous ER visits flashing through my mind. Plus, I was not in love with how it looked. See?
By that point I was over it. Even though I kept melting and adhering petals until it was done, I didn't take any more pictures because I didn't like it enough to use the storage room on my phone. I started over with three major changes.
One: I used soup spoons instead of regular spoons. They are wide and round and look SO MUCH MORE like rose petals after they are rounded. This one change made me change my mind from "what am I thinking???" to "ohmyheck iloveit iloveit iloveit!" Two: I formed each petal as I went. Then I could mold it while it was still warm into the shape I wanted for it's particular place on the flower. Three: I hot glued each petal to a circle of felt as I went instead of melting them together.
It didn't take long for me to know this was going to be pretty dang awesome.
A third of the way into it, I was already in love.
Holding a spoon above the candle, let it get hot enough to deform and then use your fingers to mold it into a curved petal for the center of the flower.
Ooops! Don't forget you're holding something flammable whilst watching Harry Potter or you'll burn a hole clear through it!
After you've got a good looking "petal" formed from your spoon, snip the handle off. Keep melting spoons until you've got a pile of usable petals from which to meld your flower.
Now, at this point the tutorial says to heat the broken end of one rose petal until it is melting and place it where you like. The melty plastic will attach to the base of the flower and you end up with one fully connected plastic flower. This was a great idea, but I found that my petals didn't fit together as well as I'd like and trying to melt them together at the bottom ended with black, charred bits and images of spontaneous ER visits flashing through my mind. Plus, I was not in love with how it looked. See?
By that point I was over it. Even though I kept melting and adhering petals until it was done, I didn't take any more pictures because I didn't like it enough to use the storage room on my phone. I started over with three major changes.
One: I used soup spoons instead of regular spoons. They are wide and round and look SO MUCH MORE like rose petals after they are rounded. This one change made me change my mind from "what am I thinking???" to "ohmyheck iloveit iloveit iloveit!" Two: I formed each petal as I went. Then I could mold it while it was still warm into the shape I wanted for it's particular place on the flower. Three: I hot glued each petal to a circle of felt as I went instead of melting them together.
It didn't take long for me to know this was going to be pretty dang awesome.
A third of the way into it, I was already in love.
And....? What do you think?
I like the shape of the soup spoons soooo much better. See what I mean? Granted, I did actually have some idea what I was doing on the second one which definitely made a difference.
I am going to make many, many more of these. Just as soon as I get myself back to the Wal-marts to buy more soup spoons. My flower used 13 petals and there's 24 spoons in a box. I may get impatient and try to make one work with 11...
Have you made anything from plastic spoons? How did it go?
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