Free Giveaway of Courage Flowers (Plus a Photo Tutorial)

Jun 30

Written By

We are in a record-breaking excessive heat warning here in Arizona. I am hibernating. And eating Popsicles for breakfast. And thinking of moving to Antarctica.Summer for me means a less hectic schedule. Time for reading. Escapes to the shade. Visits to see the grandchildren (including a new grandson!).And a break from the regular blogging routine.This summer I have a series of giveaways that I will be doing through August.Everyone likes free stuff, right?I blog about beauty in the desert and stories of courage and belonging: belonging to family, to community and to a loving God. I was reminded of that beauty, courage and belonging while going through cancer. In keeping with that theme, I have created some beautiful paper flowers. See below!! Aren't they fabulous! This week the theme is courage. (Note all the courage words on the flowers.) I need your help! I want to give away 3 of these flowers. I need you to nominate someone who you feel is courageous or who could use a bit of courage on their current journey. You can even nominate yourself if you want to!! You can comment below on this blog post or go to a FB page I set up for the flowers. Give me a bit of their/your story and I will pick 3 winners and mail them a courage flower. You can also help me by sharing this on your social media. Deadline for entering is 6 a.m. (Arizona time) on July 5, 2016. Some of you may be thinking: Hey! I'd like to make my own courage flowers! Well, you are in luck. I have a photo tutorial below. If you would like a free download to the courage paper, click here.

Courage Flowers Photo Tutorial

You will need the following supplies:

courage paper printed back to back
toothpicks or wooden skewers
a pencil
a ruler
twine
scissors
You could use a glue gun, but I don't like using hot glue on such detailed, close work to my fingers! Even the ones advertised as not being hot are too hot for me. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture with the pencil in it!!)

Cut the courage paper into four 3.5" squares. If you cut carefully, you will have enough paper for 6 squares. The other 2 squares can be saved for another flower. Fold each square as pictured below. (Imagine you are folding your paper to cut snowflakes like you did in kindergarten). Save the leftover paper, you will need a wee bit for a small circle later. Make a 1/4 inch cut across the triangle at the point with all the folds. Cut the top of the triangle in a rounded shape like a petal. See below. Do this to all four pieces of paper. Unfold. You will have 4 sets of petaled circles. Cut off pieces of the circles so that the petals are in a group of 7, 6, 5 and 4, as pictured below. Save the cut pieces. Glue the pieces so that one petal completely overlaps another petal. You will end up with four circles in sections of 6, 5, 4, and 3, as pictured below. Curl each petal using a toothpick. Using 3-4 of your leftover petals, glue the papers around a toothpick or skewer for the center of the flower. I prefer half of a wooden skewer (the type you use for making shish kabobs). It gives you a six-inch stem for the flower. The photo makes it look like a toothpick, but the skewer is pushed through a crack in the wood for photo purposes. Your petals should look like this. Cut a circle from the leftover paper the size of a penny. Working from the largest circle to the smallest, glue to the penny-size circle. It helps to scrunch the bottom of the petals a bit before gluing to the circle. Here are two circles in place. Remove glue from your hands as you go, so you don't end up with a mess, especially when pushing the skewer through all the petals to complete the flower. The underside of the flower looks like this: Here is your masterpiece! Add a bit of twine or ribbon for the leaves and wallah!, you are done! Remember if you want a chance to win a flower, please comment on the blog or on the FB page, A Bouquet of Courage. Deadline for this giveaway is 6 a.m. (Arizona time) on July 5, 2016. I will choose 3 winners and mail them a flower.Click here for a free download of the courage paper. Next week I will have hope flowers to give away. And I hope to share some of your stories of courage. Join the conversation!If you don't want to miss any postings (I have other great giveaways this summer), please sign up for email notifications. If you found me on Facebook, we all know that FB decides what makes the news feed and some days you won't find me. You can click on the box half-way down the margin on the right. (And be sure to click that you are not a robot!) I have a book coming out with Revell in 2017 about the faithfulness of God in difficult realities like cancer. Stay tuned about that!Here's another fun download: