Daisy Door Decoration

I’ve had my sparkly Spring sign on the door for a few weeks now, and while it is still Spring, it’s time for a new decoration. I’ve been mulling my options for a bit, full well knowing it was going to involve paper flowers since that’s my latest obsession.

And then Pam from Get Silvered posted this cute daisy. That was the push I needed.

Instead of making a sign this time, I decided I wanted a longer, more vertical decoration.

In Adobe Illustrator

In Adobe Illustrator I drew up some leaves for the daisy. I wanted a pair of leaves for the top, and a single leaf for the bottom. For the top pair, I wanted them to be extra sturdy, so I drew a set of decorative leaves with cutouts, and positioned them centered horizontally to each other, spaced how I wanted them to end up finished under the flower. I then selected just the outer parts of the leaves and used the Path > Offset Path tool to give them a .125″ offset to create an additional piece that would sit under the cutout parts.  I did the same process to the single leaf.

I exported my file as a DXF, since the basic version of Silhouette Studio® doesn’t support SVG files, but it does work with DXF files.

In Silhouette Studio

In Silhouette Studio I set up my Design Page settings for a 12 x 12 sheet to be cut on a mat. If you have been paying attention, you know I’m going to be using my 6 x 6 card stock, but I have a trick where I carefully place four sheets of 6 x 6 on the mat and then even more carefully set up my artwork on the screen so I can cut four colors at once.

I used Pam’s file and resized the flower portions to fit two different shades of yellow. I put the center circle on the darker piece. And then I put the decorative parts of the leaves on dark green paper and the larger leaf parts went on lighter green.

I adjusted my cut settings and then sent it all to cut.

While that was cutting, I took a regular sheet of green construction paper and rolled it into a stem. When I made my miniature paper hyacinths, I rolled the paper straight to form a tight, sturdy stem. In this case, I wanted the length to be longer, so I rolled it on a diagonal.

I added a little fast drying tacky glue at about the center point of the rolling, and then added more glue at the triangular edge that developed at the end. I smoothed that end down and wiped up the glue that seeped out, and held it until it dried.

Final Assembly

When the cutting was complete, I weeded all the pieces and began assembling my door decoration.

 

In Pam’s post, she says she curled her petals backwards for dimension. Rebel that I am, I curled mine forward. I then used fast drying tacky glue to glue the lighter flower to the darker, offsetting them so the petals overlapped.

I glued the center circle on to the top of the flower, and I cut a small rectangle of paper that I punched at both ends and glued that on the back of the flower. This piece isn’t really going to be visible so it can be any color you need.

I glued the darker decorative leaves to the lighter leaf bases with glue stick. And then I glued the two halves together, light green sides in so the decorative leaves are visible from either side if this spins. This makes them super thick – if you had thicker card stock to begin with you could probably just go with one layer of the lighter green leaf base.

For the bottom leaf, I did just go with the three layers – a sandwich of the lighter leaf base with a decorative darker leaf on either side.

I let everything dry and then I used silver thread and a needle to attach the flower to the leaves, the leaves to the stem and then the stem to the single leaf. When all was said and done, I didn’t like how the knot looked where the string from the leaves met the stem, so I cut a little rectangle of green paper and glued it over that spot.

And with that last step, it’s all set to hang on the front door.