Paper Dahlias and AG Foam Sandals

Posted by Allison Schroeder on June 28, 2017

Welcome back! I hope you all are enjoying your break and have had a chance to do some of the projects with your little olives. We are going to go through two projects today so let's get started!

Our first project took quite a bit of time but the end result was so cute! We created Dahlias out of paper and cardboard. Katem has hers hanging on her wall above her bed and I took three to the store to use as wall decoration. We used the following items:

Cardboard, bowl, pen, scissors, cardstock in three colors, paper cutter, hot glue gun, and command strips.

First we traced a bowl on a piece of cardboard with a pen. Our bowl was about 6" in diameter.

Second we cut out the circle with scissors. This circle will serve as the base for our flower petals.

This next step was the most time consuming. Katem picked out purple, pink, and blue cardstock that would be her flower petals. Since I had 12"x12" cardstock on hand we used that and cut each piece into 4"x6" rectangles. We used four sheets of purple, three sheets of pink, and one sheet of blue. We did have extra pieces but each flower will be a little different based on how close you place your petals to each other.

Once all of our petals were cut out it was time to roll them into the correct shape. After a few trials and errors I got the cone shape I was hoping for. We used a hot glue gun to secure the petals' cone shape and then glued them to the cardboard.

After the first purple layer we did two layers of pink. The first pink layer of pink went in between the purple petals and the second pink layer filled in the spaces of the first pink layer.

The last full layer of petals was done in blue. The trickiest part was trying to figure out how to make the center look like a petal and not an empty space. I took one of the cone shapes and folded it in half. I glued it right in the middle and 'fluffed' the petal to make sure it looked full.

Last we used a command strip to hang the Dahlia above Katem's bed so when we move she will be able to take it with her and not damage the walk in the process.

Now let's get started on our sandals, here are our supplies:

Foam sheets, 3/8" ribbon, embellishments (we used gems and embroidery flowers), hot glue gun, pencil, and scissors.

Katem picked out the color combos that she wanted and decided what type of embellishment each pair had. Luckily I had a TON of ribbon and various plastic gems from my bow making days so it was easy to find combos that worked.

We tried making a sole template by tracing around an AG shoe but it didn't come out quite right. It was actually easier to hold Kit's foot on the foam and trace around it. When we cut the soles out we rounded them off a bit bigger than what we traced. You will need two of each side because we will be gluing then together soon.

Next, again using Kit's foot as a guide, we measured the amount of ribbon we would need for each shoe. We came up with about 3.5" for each ribbon.

Then we each took a different job to cut out all of our supplies; I cut out the soles and Katem marked and cut out the ribbons. Once we had all of our pieces cut out we started to assemble the shoes. We found that the shoe fit best if the ribbon was glued about half way down the sole. When gluing you will want to glue the ribbon to the bottom of one sole.

Next we took the other sole that matched up with the shoe we were working on and glued it to the bottom of our sole/ribbon combo. We were sure to put glue all the way around the ribbon sole to ensure that our ribbon would stay in place. When you push the two soles together you may have some glue seep out of the sides. Since I don't have a whole lot of feeling left in my finger tips from serving for years I just wiped it off. If you can still feel with yours you may want to let the glue dry a bit first.