Fresh flower gift wrapping

Love is in the air this week, my best friend got married yesterday and I'm feeling all glowy. Inspired by her nuptials I've created a special summer wrapping project using beautiful paper from Lonetree , fresh flowers and hand dyed silk. Lonetree kindly sent me a selection of their beautiful papers to wrap with each design printed in the UK by the first carbon neutral printed in the world. I really love the delicate natural patterns and gorgeous soft shades each the papers come in. 

Using the papers as my guide I wanted to create wrapping that incorporated fresh flowers and also silk that I had dyed previously using avocado skins and pips. To dye silk, bring a large sauce pan of water to boil add the skins and pips of approx. three avocados and 1 metre of silk fabric let it simmer for about 20 minutes or until it has turned pink. Rinse and dry.

Wrap your present, if its an odd shape then I recommend putting into a box. It'll make the flowers much easier to work with and you'll be able to see as much of the paper as possible. I used this paper. 

Wrap the silk fabric around the centre and tie in a knot. My fabric was 45 x 90 cm. you want the fabric width to be quite full so you get get lots of texture. 

Using the techniques I shared in my supermarket bouquet I created a mini bunch of flowers using hydrangeas, peonies and jasmine from the garden. Remove as many of the leaves from the main flowers as you can, put them together so the main buds face upwards and fasten together using florists wire. Leave ends of the wire free so you can tie onto the fabric. 

Position the flowers over the knot and wrap the wire under the 'bow' so that it can't be seen. You might need to play around with the position of the flowers so that everything lies in the right direction. 

I love this so much, of course it probably won't travel too well (!) but for a local special occasion it is really gorgeous. If you wanted to create something similar then you could substitute the fresh flowers for really good fake ones and create the same effect. Happy making! x 

The wrap for this paper was kindly supplied by Lonetree, project, styling, photos, thoughts and opinions are all my own.