It doesn’t seem like two minutes ago I was sitting down to write the WI.RED January blog post, and here I am, onto Febrauary already! For those of you who have recently started reading this blog, I’m part of my local Women’s Institute. You can see our Facebook page here or email hellowired@yahoo.co.uk for more information. I write a post about our meetings every month.
So, onto February!
At our WI we have a cake rota where 3-4 people every meeting make or bring something for us to sell with the teas and coffees. This month was my turn, and after a bit of deliberating (Argh! What do you take to the WI?!) I made some chocolate cupcakes with Nutella buttercream icing (recipe coming soon). We also had some Lady Grey Tea Cookies, Gingernut Tiffin and Shortbread. Yuuummmmmm.
We had a full house with lots of our members attending, plus a few guests. Back in October, we ran a competition to use a paper plate to make the most creative item. One of our members, Tia, made the most amazing flower brooch. This month she very kindly agreed to show us all how to do it. I chose a baby pink paper plate and decorated it with a grey and white polka dot ribbon… I have to confess Tia did help me quite a bit as I’m not the most patient or creative person! The ladies all got crafty and we had some very impressive efforts – see the pictures below.
Here’s a step-by-step on how to make the brooches.
— Take your paper plate and cut the rim off – this is the bit you’ll be using. You want one end to be thicker than the other, so start about 3cm in and gradually reduce it to around 1cm. For smaller flowers, use half the paper plate only.
— Start to make incisions vertically along the rim. At the 3cm end, make these about 2cm apart and 2cm down. As the rim gets thinner, make more and more incisions, until near the end they are abut 1/2cm apart. Now for the fiddly bit. Using scissors or a craft knife, shape each part into rounded ends, to make the petals – see the pictures if you’re unsure. Do this to every part of the rim.
— Wrap the plate around your fingers a few times to loosen the paper and make it more malleable.
— Take each petal and roll it outwards (so if the colour is facing you, roll it away from you), to make them more petal-like. If you don’t do this, the petals will stick upright and it won’t look right. You’ll see what I mean once you start doing it. Keep playing with them until they’re all rolled nicely.
— Starting from the smallest end, roll inwards so that the colour is on the inside. Roll the whole thing in on itself until it looks like a flower. I found that it looked best when I rolled it really tightly, then let go slightly so it loosened a little. Using a glue gun, glue the end flap onto the flower to secure it.
— That’s your flower done. You’re now free to use your imagination decorating it to make it look lovely!
I don’t think mine was great to be honest, but I’m not the best at things like this!
I can’t wait for next month’s meeting – a talk on Permaculture. For those of you who don’t know, Permaculture is a way of gardening with the minimum of effort – planting things which work well together and so on. I’m not at all green fingered, but am always interested in learning about new things so I I’m very much looking forward to it!