Sunflowers - Positivity

 

Week 5: Sunflowers

This week I made sunflowers, which commonly represent positivity. They are also my mom's favorite flower, so I have a lot of experience making these into pens as gifts for her. I think being positive is crucial to finding happiness and enjoying life. Focusing on the small but good things can do a lot when it feels like all the big things are going wrong. I worked on part of these outside with a friend and it was very grounding and refreshing to have a chance to do crafts while enjoying nature. Today also had an incredible sunset, which is just another positive thing to focus on. 

These sunflowers are another "rolled flower", like the roses I made last week. It cuts out petals around a spiral (shown digitally below since I forgot to take pictures of it cut out before assembly (again)), that form a flower when rolled around itself. I shaded the base of each petal using pastels to be more orange, although it does not really show in the picture. I use a small wooden dowel with a slit into the top of it where I insert one side of the spiral to start the roll, and a base made of tape where the flower sits as I roll it. Then, I pull the flower off the dowel and hot glue it. Finally, I assemble it to the dyed skewer and add the green base, although this week was a bit trickier with finding a way to glue the flower and wrap the base so that the sunflower faced outwards like how they naturally grow, but I made it work somehow. 

And this is the bouquet so far, made up of camellias, lavender, roses, and sunflowers: 

Read more about sunflowers:

https://ruthgoudy.com/sunflower-a-sign-of-optimism-and-joy