Framed Flower Art

If you are my sister or my mom, you are not allowed to read this post until after Tuesday.  Super secret birthday projects are contained here.  Step away from your computer.

My niece's first birthday is this coming Tuesday and I wanted to make something for her.  I saw the cutest framed collage of paper butterflies on Meet The Dubiens here several months ago and thought it would be cute to try someday.  It is now someday.  I don't have a butterfly punch, but I do have a flower punch that I used to make a mobile for the same niece for Christmas.

Jill at Meet The Dubiens made hers by leaving the glass out of the frame, but I wanted mine to be enclosed for the sake of dust and sticky kid fingers.  So I headed out to Joann Fabric's to hunt down a shadow box frame.  When I was there, I also decided to look for an adhesive that would raise the flowers off the background a bit.  I found both.

The cost to make it was $14.88.  I used store coupons, so the frame was $12.49 and the adhesive foam squares were $2.39.  I used paper and the punch I already had.

The hardest part of this project was deciding what paper to use.  I went back and forth between pinks and primary colors.  I had done the mobile in primaries, so I decided to go with that again. 

Here's the goods:

The glass of wine is not mandatory for the project, but it does help.

I started by punching a bunch of flowers out using the paper I decided on.  Once they were punched, I folded the petals up a bit.

I chose a piece of plain white paper for the background because I thought it would make the flowers stand out the best.  I put that down on the table with the frame insert around it and placed the paper flowers on it to get the spacing I wanted. 

Once I had everything the way I liked it, I put the sticky squares on the backs of the flowers and stuck them on to the paper background.  I did the four corners first and worked my way in.  I probably should have measured and marked precisely where each one should go, but I'm lazy impatient, so I just eyeballed it.

Once I had all the flowers on, I reassembled the frame and hung it on the wall so I could stand back and make sure everything was even.  I did end up making some adjustments, but all in all, the whole thing only took about 30 minutes.

Although I found it nearly impossible to get a good picture of it, it was especially hard to get a good picture of it hanging on the wall with the glare of the glass.  So here's the finished product standing up around the house:

And outside:

I'm linking up to Nifty Thrifty Sunday over at Nifty Thrifty Things and Feature Friday over at Spunky Junky.