Little help with a gift?

[AnimePhoenix]

So I'm working on a gift for my stepmom for Christmas (long time away but inspiration struck hard). My idea is a vase with her favorite flowers in it. I made the vase from 12"x12" (I think) paper that I got from Michael's from there scrapbooking section and the flowers I'm making from 4.25ish" square 24lbs paper, little thicker than printer paper. Dozen lilies and maybe a dozen irises (irisi?). Couple of things to figure out that I haven't yet.

1: What do I use for the stems? They're small and no I'm NOT using pipe cleaners. I want this to look good not like a school project. Gardening wire came to mind but...
2: How to keep them on the stems and still look good? I was thinking about using green electric tape or something like that.
3: How to keep them IN the vase? It's small. Maybe 1.5"-2" base. And it's a Verdi vase so the hole is small too. One thought I had was a Styrofoam half ball?
4: How do I make it...solid I guess is the word? Keep it from crinkling and creasing and protect it from water and such.

Any ideas?

[Earlobes]

You can use wire and floral tape to make the stems.

[OrigamiGeek]

you could put a weight at the bottom so it does not topple. when you are finished you could spray it with varnish I am pretty sure that will protect it.

[Gerardo]

That'll make the whole floral arrangemente look better.

Maybe make leafs for the stems to make them look more realistic.

And speaking about leafs, you could also contact LeafPiece -fellow member of the forum- who's an expert on floral origami.

[AnimePhoenix]

All very good ideas and I'm going to look into what weights to use too...and I'm going to have to refold the vase because my cat tore it up.

[LeafPiece]

Ah, I wish I had seen this before responding to your question in my gallery. If you've already gotten started this may be a little late anyway, but I will try to explain in more detail here...

1. First, you already got some good advice. Floral wire is a good way to go. Use the "Stem Wire" for your main stems and a thinner wire (22 to 24 gauge) works well for things like leaves and smaller flowers. All this can be found in the same section in the Michael's store you go to. Considering your flowers will be on the smaller side and you're making so many of them, your arrangement will probably look nice and full without leaves; but like Gerardo said, leaves would add a nice touch for realism.

2. I think green electric tape could work to attach stems. I've used it before to hold stems together hidden inside the vase, but not to attach a stem to a flower. A better way would be to glue. Which models are you using? A traditional lily? You can make a loop in one end of the wire. Poke the other end through the flower (from top to bottom of flower) but don't pull all the way through yet. Put a generous amount of glue on the loop, then pull the stem through until the glue-covered loop is wedged in the narrow part of the flower. Squeeze from the outside of the model a little to work the glue around. This will hold well and the outside of your flower will look better without tape.

3. Your bouquet will be fairly top heavy, so like OrigamiGeek said, you will need some sort of weight in the bottom. I can't help you much here, because I always use a real vase for my arrangements. I never felt like I could make a paper vase sturdy enough. I'm not sure what kind of scrapbook paper you used for the vase, but it might be thick enough to hold it's shape with sand or something like that. Anything that adds weight and helps hold the stems in place at the same time is a good thing. Whatever you end up using, just make sure your weight and stems are secure and don't move around too much. Heavy/pokey things in a paper container do not exactly go well together.

4. If treated well, the flowers will be fine without any special treatment, but spray varnish would help like OrigamiGeek suggested. What kind of paper are you using, besides 24lb?

[gordigami]

When the goal involves making flowers, vases, and leaves, Oriland is a terrific resource.
http://www.oriland.com/store/collections/main.php
The flower CDs are called Charm, Beauty or Delight, and any or all would help you to make a professional looking arrangement.
They even have downloadable E-books, if you're in a hurry. However, I might suggest that the CDs would be more stable & permanent.
Excellent step by step instructions.
Double tissue paper, tissue foil, crepe paper and MC treated Unryu might reflect the delicate nature of flowers a bit more realistically than thick paper, but trial & error experimentation with various papers will ultimately allow you to narrow down your choices .
If you're up for the challenge, a 1:4 ratio miniature flower arrangement, within a shadowbox frame might be an impressive gift .
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set ... 3924090819

[AnimePhoenix]

To Leaf Piece:

1: I'm going to have to remember the stem wire bit. I don't think I'm going to actually do leaves because they'll be enough going on as it is but will see how it goes.
2: I am doing a dozen traditional lilies and maybe dozen something else...Just don't know what yet. But that glue on the loops thing is genius. Going to us that for all the ones I can.
3: Thinking about getting a small foam...something to stick the stems in and (hopefully) weigh it down. If that's not enough a bead on top of the foam to even out the weight.
4: I'm not sure what the weight of the paper for the vase was but the other flowers (if I make more) are going to be the same weight or printer paper. I'm broker than a college student here.

To gordigami
As awesome as all that is that requires buying stuff. I has no money...right now...-bookmarks site anyway-

[LeafPiece]

Sounds like a fun project, you'll have to let us know how it goes. A decent quality printer paper is fine. I still use printer paper for a lot of things. The reason I ask, though, is because I'm not sure if you planned to use colored paper or not, but a lot of colored printer paper will indeed wrinkle and bleed and look poorly if exposed to moisture. The spray varnish might be a good idea then (again something I haven't tried, though), but if you color the paper yourself, you could use something like acrylic paints which are already resistant to moisture and very inexpensive. Those are just my thoughts, but there are several topics out there on coloring and/or preserving models.

[Wuggums47]

Florists wire and floral tape are the best for it, you could use electrical tape, but I'm not sure it will get the same result. You can also try to fold some leaves to attach to them stems.

[AnimePhoenix]

Yea life kick me in the butt. Final decision on the flowers and stems: Floral wire and tape with a little bit of glue on the wire inside to make sure it stays then spray varnish to protect from water. Now to find a thingie to stab them into at the bottom...and new paper for the vase because my cats got to it...

[alkagupta0408]

I think you should make a 3D origami flower vase, decorated with origami flowers. You can check out how to make origami flowers on my channel(link in signature).

Hope this helped...

[AnimePhoenix]

Although another idea has sprung to life. My step mom has this love of black and white pictures and shadow boxes. What if I get a shadow box and put a set of white flowers in it instead?

[benjaminwalley]

I made a vase full of roses for my mom a while back. I filled the bottom with sand and made some fairly simple box pleated stems.

[AnimePhoenix]

I made a vase full of roses for my mom a while back. I filled the bottom with sand and made some fairly simple box pleated stems.

-thinks- A little baggie of soft sand...Maybe...