Paper Roses - Table Decorations

So I am taking a break from dressmaking (forced - we are both on holiday and the mister won't leave until the end of the week) and have thought about table decorations. I want to keep them simple and cheap, so thought of making paper roses to cover the tables with. If they disintegrate by the end of the night I doubt it'll matter as we're guaranteed to be too jolly to notice and at least no one will care if the umpteenth glass of red gets spilled over them.

I've been looking around a bit and got stuck with these instructions from Buzzfeed. The roses looked gorgeous and easy to make.
So I did what it said on the page.

I cut out 4 pieces of paper. Well, card, I only had card and folded them as instructed.

Then I cut them into petal bits and glued them together with craft glue. Bit tricky as the glue not only did not fasten the paper, but also tried to get my fingers involved. A job for the glue gun if I consider mass production.

Plastic pegs turned out to be a bit of a saviour.

Unlike in the instructions I also cut the bottom into little strips, which helped enormously in trying to get each layer to stick. Here's the result, following instructions:

It looks better in the photo than in reality, trust me.

I was a little frustrated with the fragility of the whole thing. I didn't expect it to last a lifetime, like I said earlier, but layers still seemed keen to separate. So glue gun again? Craft glue does seem the wrong choice.


My second try was inspired by this website, but I didn't use the template as my card was A2 and not printer-friendly. Instead, I drew and cut my own petals, just roughly making the shapes smaller towards the middle. As suggested, I used a bamboo skewer to wrap the first few petals, then slowly added the rest. Again, craft glue was a bad choice, but I am happier with the shape of the thing, which, incidentally, looks worse than in reality.

I guess I'll go with the first, but will have to alter the type of glue, paper and bottom bits to make it work the way it should. I am now collecting little Brie boxes to paint, bejewel and stick the roses onto. I might add a little glitter to the tips and/ or glue gun dew.