I'm pretty chuffed with these Queen of Heart Cupcakes, as I am in the small minority of people who are not avid bakers, and certainly not keen cupcake decorators. I also didn't have a heart cut out so these were all cut free hand. The cupcakes graced the mad hatters tea party table.
We also had an option for some oversized tissue flowers floating around in the background. The internet is awash with tissue paper flower DIY projects. Here is how I did mine:
I first chose my palette, this is Wonderland so I was afforded a bit of artistic licence. Pale peach and deep blue seem to create a pleasing contrast.
I cut out my petals: the joy of tissue paper is that you can cut out numerous pieces in one go, so I took a folded wedge of tissue paper in each colour and cut out roughly 12 petals in three increasing sizes.
You must forgive me for less than beautiful photography. These were very much taken in the heat of making, often with my wrong hand free!
I took half of the smallest petal size, and pleated the narrower ends in my hand, bunching up a bouquet of petals and creating a stem stump which i wrapped with some sellotape. This stem is very important to keep pronounced throughout adding petals as it helps centre the flower and will also be a useful protruding piece to attach a real stem to later on.
Turn it over and you will see you have the start of a flower forming.
Turn the flower back over so it's wrong side is facing you. Take the remaining smallest size petals and do another layer of adding, keeping the stem pronounced. Always add petals from behind and always start with the smallest size.
This second layer is to ensure you have an even distribution of petals, so keep looking at it from the front to see where new petals need to go.
Before you add the next size up of petal, my advice is to spiral a bit of glue around the centre back of the flowers, this helps the flower stay together and keep that cupped petal shape as you add more and more petals.
Once you are out of the smallest size, move on to the next size up. Repeat the initial petal adding steps.
Looking at it from the front you will see a beautiful (and in my case, a bit bonkers) flower forming.
Keep that stem stump pronounced!
Once you have added all the petal layers, add a few pieces of tape to the back of the final layer to keep the back petals from flopping backwards.
These look pretty beautiful in their abstraction. If you want to go a bit further in creating a more flower like bloom you can do the following:
Next steps: I added scrunched up fine strips of a bright orange tissue paper to the centre, just by putting a blob of glue to the centre and pressing a bundle of the scrunched up tissue in.
I got some dowel from a local builders yard (also available at craft shops but often a lot more expensive), fitted a foam board base and sprayed it a bright and strange turquoise green colour. To attached the flower to the stem, I made sure the flower stem stump was pronounced enough and took two thin strips of gaff tape and wound them round both the stem and the flower stump.
To weight the foam board base, I simply sprayed a large pebble the same colour as the base and placed it on the base.
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