Make A Halloween Flower Display

YOU WILL NEED:
• Single-ply black crêpe paper
• Florist crêpe: black, green
• White acrylic paint
• 45.5cm 20-gauge clothwrapped wire
• Black floral tape
• Bakers twine
• Fringing scissors
• Striping brush
• Large sewing needle

NOTE: all dimensions are given as height × width
METHOD:
1. Cut a 40.5cm piece of black florist crêpe and use a striping brush to add acrylic white paint. Leave to dry.
2. Cut two 9cm lengths of wire and two 2.5cm lengths of wire per how many ravens you’d like to create. Cut a 5.5cm × 16.5cm strip from the painted crêpe and fringe it with the grain three quarters of the way down.
3. For petals 150 and 151: cut three each from the painted crêpe to the short line on the template. Cut a 4cm × 5.5cm piece from the lime-green florist crêpe and fringe it with the grain one-quarter of the way down.
4. Petal 152: Cut a 6.5cm × 34.5cm piece from the black single-ply crêpe, accordion fold it to fit the template and cut a continuous petal.
TIME TO BUILD:
Secure all layers with floral tape.
1. Fully wrap 2.5cm wires with tape.
2. Start covering a 9cm piece of wire with tape and join stems. Attach a 2.5cm piece of wire 2.5cm from the end of the longer wire. Tape in 6mm of the short wire to join it to the longer wire, and finish stem. Repeat with remaining two wires.
3. Gather and wrap the fringed strip around the tops of both footed wires.
4. Cup petal 150 with stripes facing out. Scrunch-pleat each petal and secure evenly around the base with stripes facing out.
5. Repeat step 4 with Petal 151, attaching at points in between Petals 150.
6. Using a pencil, curl a few petal tips away from centre.
7. Fold green fringe into thirds width-wise, scrunch-pleat base. Flatten the fringed side into a cat-eye shape and secure the base with tape.
8. Scrunch-pleat black crêpe evenly around green fringe and secure tightly with tape. Fan out continuous petal.
9. Snip off extra tape, leaving 6mm of tape as a base.
10. To make the garland, use a thick needle strung with bakers twine and pass it carefully through the green fringe centres.
QUICK TIP: Make a few ravens from solid black crêpe and mix them in with the striped variety. To secure them to a branch, straddle legs over the branch, and wrap each leg in the opposite direction, up and around the branch. Gently open up and bend the small wires to look like claws.

This project was extracted from Paper to Petal by Rebecca Thuss and Patrick Farrell (£16.99, Potter Craft), nhmshop.co.uk. Get your copy here