I made some origami flowers using the instructions from origami-instructions.com (note: this website is covered with ads). I made a trial flower with newspaper first, and it wasn’t hard actually.. Here’s what I made.

I used copy paper, and painted both sides with diluted acrylic. I didn’t really put enough thought into it. I was trying to go for a graduated look. The way to do it is how it’s done on the yellow one. A diagonal stripe down the middle. I then coated them with diluted PVA. To flatten them, I placed them in punched pockets and left them overnight sandwiched in a heavy book on a packed bookshelf.

Making the flower:

Here are the final pieces:

I don’t know why I took a picture of this:

Here are the finished petals assembled. I used this video tutorial for the leaves, and painted some bamboo skewers with acrylic for the stems.

I considered making a vase out of paper maché, but then I remembered I still had this old cocoa tin that I used to keep my paintbrushes in. So I covered it with gesso, then after deciding on a spacescape, I thought it would be better to have something brighter, so I took inspiration from (read: plagiarised) one of Moriah’s shoes. I kept messing up the colours, and for some reason, 7 coats of white later, the clouds were still showing cyan underneath. I really am having a lot of trouble with caerulean paint. Yes, there are stars during the day. What are you gonna do about it?

It doesn’t show so well in this photo (my camera has trouble with cyan, too), but applying varnish to this caused the same trouble I had with this project. My caerulean acrylic paint just isn’t stable at all. I don’t have this problem with other colours. But applying anything over caerulean — PVA, acrylic varnish, acrylic paint — will reactivate the pigment and make it run. It would seem all I can do now is apply multiple coats of spray sealant over it and hope that works. I see art youtubers varnishing over caerulan based paints and not having this issue, so what am I doing wrong? The same thing happens with cyan ink from my printer. When I coat home-printed photos with diluted PVA, only the cyan ink is unstable and smears. I can’t find any info about this online though. Anyone have any insights?

This looked so pretty in real life, but no amount of adjustments could replicate it in the photo.

Now to arrange them all in the vase. I have a roll of upholstery foam, but I can’t find it, so I had to make do with stuffing the bottom of the tin with brown paper, and then piercing it with the skewers to keep the flowers in place. I then painted some diluted PVA over it to keep everything stable.

I then glued artificial moss on top. I’m not really sure it works, but hey, I don’t care.

And here’s the end result: