Paper Flowers

Do you remember the fragrance sticks that many of us used to have (or maybe still do)? You know...the decorative bottles with bamboo sticks standing in fragrant oil? See an example below which will serve as my "before" picture.

I had some on my desk at work for about 10 years! I never added more oil and they just sat there, collecting dust. Mine had small plastic flowers on the top end of the sticks and the bottle was shorter.

My sweet, long-time friend from work recently had neck surgery. I wanted to take her something special. Knowing real flowers wouldn't last very long, I decided to take a stab at making my own. Then I remembered these not so lovely bamboo sticks sitting in the cute glass bottle! Time to upcycle!

 I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. My girlfriend loved them, especially knowing I made them for her. Sadly my cell phone doesn't take the best pictures, but hopefully you get the idea.

 I cut the layers of flowers with my Cricut. I used two large daisy-like flowers, and 3 smaller flowers on each bamboo stem. I used a black Sharpie marker on the top and bottom of the plastic flowers to darken them. They were pastel before. I used a small hole punch in the center of each layer of flower, stacked them up and put the bottom of the bamboo through the holes, using a little bit of glue on each layer to hold it all together. Wink of Stella added a bit of a frosty shine to the top layer.

I washed out the bottle, of course, and tied some twine around the top and the bamboo fragrance sticks have been reborn!! 😍Hope you like them. I may have to make some for myself.