The Art of Paper Flowers: Creating Realistic Blossoms from Ordinary Papers

I remember many a rainy South Florida day, sitting at Grandma Ruby’s kitchen table making flowers. My grandmother was very proud of her floral creations. From a foot or two away, you honestly couldn’t tell one of Grandma’s flowers from the real thing in her garden. The secret to Grandma’s lifelike petals was a product called “wood fibre.”

Wood fibre was made from the pith of Aralia papyrifera, a species of bamboo that grew in the swamps on the Island of Formosa in the China Sea. Sheets of the plant’s pith, resembling a moist rice paper, were dyed beautiful colors. From the 1950s though the ’70s, you could easily find wood fibre in craft stores; unfortunately, it is not manufactured today.

After Grandma passed away, her wood fibre crafts were packed up and set aside for me. Some forty years later, I found myself sitting at my own kitchen table, staring into the crate of Grandma’s wood fibre flower supplies. Wire, floral tape, artificial leaves, stamens, Grandma’s treasured flower patterns, and even rare blocks of unopened wood fibre were staring back at me. I was eight years old again.

Grandma’s flower patterns were a labor of love. She would work for hours on the details, often pulling apart real flowers to check the petals against her own renditions. Once she was happy with her patterns, my grandfather (who had owned a roofing company) would cut the shapes out of tin sheets so his wife’s patterns would last forever.

I decided not to open or use the rare and precious wood fibre; instead, I chose to craft Grandma’s flowers using colorful scrapbooking, craft, and construction papers. Ironic if you think about it: paper was once a plant, and I am using paper to craft a plant once again.

This book contains Grandma’s original patterns (which I have adapted to be used with paper) and my complete instructions for each flower. I hope bringing these flowers to life gives you as much joy and as many memories as this craft has given me.