Crepe Paper Calla Lily

Hi everyone! Mother’s Day is this Sunday! I have my gift ready, do you? Today I’m sharing a crepe paper calla lily tutorial that incorporates chocolate! This makes a great gift for the mothers in your life because its handmade, the flowers last forever, and the center is edible!

On another sadder note, I started to add a watermark on some of my photos because I found my peony tutorial on another site. The other site took all my photos and even put their own watermark on my photos. 🙁 I really don’t like to use watermarks though, so I’m still not sure if I’m going to continue or chalk it up to something that will inevitably happen on the internet. Any thoughts on this?

If you would like to feature this tutorial on your site, I really appreciate it! But please only use 1-2 photos and a snippet or summary of the post with a link back to my post.

Now, onto the tutorial for the calla lilies!

You will need:

• Crepe paper: Crepe paper is paper with crinkles in it. It is similar to paper streamers but much more dense. I use 180gm crepe paper. I strongly suggest buying quality crepe paper because the stretching ability is much greater.
• Candy with a gold or yellow wrapper: You need something to be the yellow center of the lily. I used Almond Roca because it was the only one I could find that was long.
• Florist tape and wire
• Scissors
• Glue

First, cut rectangular strips of crepe paper, 2″ x 4″ (left side of image). Make sure that the crinkles are parallel with the long side of hte rectangle. You’ll need one strip per flower. Next, trim your strips so they have the petal shape shown above (right). The exact shape isn’t important, so you can make your tip sharper, wider, or however you like.

Now you need to cup the petal. You do this by putting the pads of your thumb at the bottom of the petal before the neck. Stretch the paper outwards and the petal will form a bowl/cup. Only stretch the part right above the neck of the petal. Do not stretch the top tip of the petal.

After you have cupped your petal (on the left) , turn it around and roll the top edge towards you (right). Begin at the top tip of the petal and roll down. Do not roll or stretch the actual tip of the flower because you want it to remain pointy.

This is what your petal should look like now. It should have the rough shape of a calla lily.

Now you need to make the stem. Make the stem as long as you need. Because I used a thin wire, I tripled up the wire for some strentgh. Leave an extra 5″ or so of wire so you can wrap it around the chocolate.

Wrap the excess wire around the chocolate tightly.

Now use your floral tape and start wrapping the chocolate to cover the wires.

Move your way down the wire and wrap the entire stem. Remember to stretch the tape slightly as you go so it is sticky. If your tape looks chalky like mine above, it is probably because it is too old and the adhesive has turned powdery. I ended up switching tape rolls.

Now you need to insert the center into your formed petal. Open up the petal and place the candy center inside.

Position the candy center so that it is high enough to be seen, but low enough to be covered by the petal.

Apply a little bit of glue to one side of the petal opening and glue down to the green base of the candy center.. In the image above, I glued down the left side. Then wrap the remaining side over and glue down as well.

Your petal sides should overlap as shown above. Use floral tape to wrap the bottom of the petal and blend into the wire stem.

This is what your flower should like now.

Now use your fingers to re-stretch the cup of the petal so that it isn’t touching the candy center.

And now you’re done!

You can make a bouquet of calla lilies or add some silk flowers into the arrangement as I did above.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. This flower is very easy to do and you can make an arrangement in less than 30 minutes! If you have any trouble, please feel free to ask me! If you decide to try this flower out, I would love to see your work!