Easiest Carnation Corsage Pin

Easy Carnation Corsage Pin

Book Repurposing

So, when I address an audience, I like to introduce Book Crafts by passing out a project that we do together…

The Easiest Book Corsage

Start with pages taken from a book cut into circles roughly 2-3 inches in diameter (they don’t have to be perfectly round or even a perfectly measured size- I eyeball it and cut several pages at one time. If you like, you can use fancy edge scissors or cut scallops around the circumference of your circles, but it’s not necessary.)

Circles stacked and stapled in an “X”, the first step in making a book flower.

Next, stack the circles on top of each other ( 8-12 circles in the stack depending on how thick the paper is). Rotate the circles so that the text of each layer doesn’t line up with adjacent layers.

Now, put a staple in the center of the circles, through all the layers, and then flip the stack over and put a staple through all the layers, forming an “X” with the other staple coming from the other side. It is not a big deal if your staples are not EXACTLY in the middle of your circles, just eyeball it!

At this point, your stack should look like a very thin stack of book page pancakes with a couple of staples in the middle. This is what I might hand out to individuals in an audience so that they can actually shape their 3-D corsage on their own.

Top layer gathered up and smooshed into a column.

Each layer is separated from the stack, then smooshed together into the upright pillar.

From here, all you have to do is take each layer and gently (but Decisively) smoosh it all together. Don’t pull so hard that you pull the circle away from the staple! The first circle will wad up into a pillar, if you do it right, and each successive layer will broaden the base and widen the clump that will become the bloom…. eventually, when all the layers have been tightly smushed together, your Book Flower will resemble a wad of trash, suitable for shooting baskets into the trash can from across the room.

If you will resist that temptation, then you can gently unfurl those carefully wadded up layers into a remarkable facsimile of a Carnation made from text pages…

All you need now, is to make it so you can wear your book flower, either by turning it into a corsage, or gluing it to a headband, or somehow affixing it to a hat. for a Fashion Forward Flowered Fedora!

With the addition of a pin and maybe a couple green leaves, you will have a corsage which will stop strangers in their tracks, and cause people to do double takes, and maybe even ask you where you got it.

Leaves can be repurposed from a silk arrangement, or cut from text, and painted with acrylic paint, or dyed using alcohol inks, to make them green before attaching to the book flower corsage.

Special Hint if You Have a Bandsaw

Circles cut from the “hole” left from creating a Book Safe using a band saw, but anyone can cut circles by hand if they don’t have a band saw.

The text from the hole removed from the cavity of the book when you cut a book safe can be further cut into these circles in bulk, perfect for making large numbers of book flowers. Remember that they don’t have to be perfectly round, just round-ISH.