All work and no play...

I know I'm supposed to be knee deep in cleaning and organizing so that we can get moved out of here before our lease is up at the new house, but you know what they say:  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.  And we all know that things ended pretty badly for ol' Jack.

So, in the interest of preserving my sanity and not hacking my family to death with an axe, I took a break and made a lil Valentine bouquet.  No, it's not red or pink and it doesn't have hearts or glitter on it. That doesn't make it any less of a Valentine bouquet.  So there.

I got my inspiration for these flowers when I was taking out the bathroom trash.  I noticed that there were several empty toilet paper tubes in the trash can and I've been seeing a lot of cool potty paper tube crafts lately.  I love crafts that are recycled, upcycled or repurposed as long as they're not too cheesy.  I usually put toilet paper tubes in the same class with yogurt cup lids, pompoms and pipe cleaners.  They're great for kids crafts but I would probably never use them for anything but that.

I may be changing my mind about the toilet paper tubes.  I've seen some pretty spectacular stuff being made out of them recently.  These potty paper tube flowers are not spectacular, but they were quick and easy to make and I kinda like them.  I made them with the intention of painting them but then I decided I like the natural look so I left them.  For the centers I used little cardboard numbers and some bottle caps because they were the right size and I could find them without too much effort.

The stems are paper tubes made from magazine pages.  I chose to use those also because they were sort of lying within easy reach.  That's my design criteria.  The best material for a project is the material I can reach without having to get off the couch.  It's also nice to have an ample supply of whatever material I'm working with which is another benefit of the tubes.  Everyone in my house has some form of IBS so we always have a LOT of empty toilet paper tubes on hand. 
 
I saw some stunning coffee filter roses on a blog recently but I didn't want to take the time to paint these so I decided to leave them plain and see what happened.  I think they turned out great.  Jayson has our good camera and these bad cell phone pics don't show the detail very well but they're pretty darn realistic.  I used a dress pattern for the...uuhhh...whatchamacallits.  Calyx?  I think that's right.  And I wrapped the stems with twine just to be different.

The vase is filled with little origami stars.  It actually needs some more but if I do too many in one sitting my hands seize up.  Not because I'm old and arthritic but because I have wrist parts missing due to a surgery made necessary by a birth defect which was probably caused by generations of intermarrying on my mother's side of the family.  That's right, I will admit to a branchless family tree before I admit to arthritis.