How can I reuse or recycle fake flowers?
We’ve had an email from Marisa:
A bit of a weird one for you! My MIL is redecorating her living room and that means replacing her huge collection of fake flower bouquets to match the new colour scheme. I hate fake flowers but would like to save them from landfill if possible. Any suggestions?
If the flowers aren’t too discoloured or dusty, offer them to your local charity/thrift/op shop for resale. If they are a bit too dusty for that, you could try cleaning them first – there are a variety of different ways to do it apparently, just be careful not to use hot water in case it dissolves the glue which holds them together.
As for reuses, a lot of people use smaller flowers/buds for decorating hair accessories/fascinators, or purses/bags. Larger flowers can be pulled apart for their petals and used to make a scaly (in a good, mermaid way, not a ill/reptilian way) effect for costumes or, again, as decoration for purses/bags.
Any other suggestions or specific tutorials?
(Photo by assiewin)
Try spray painting a few and see if you like the result. If so you could invest in coordinating colors and be able to reuse some of all of them.
There is actually a spray paint product especially for fake flowers. http://www.afloral.com/Floral-Supplies/Floral-Paint
Regular spray paint doesn’t stay on synthetic fabrics or plastics very well, although fabric paint and airbrush paint usually work nicely. But it’s also fun to take the flowers apart and reassort the pieces, use the fabric petals and leaves in applique and decoupage projects, attach the flowers and/or leaves to various findings for hair accessories and jewelry, and use the stems and greenery as a base for flowers made of recycled materials like soda cans and magazines. If you Google “silk flower craft tutorial”, there are pages of fake flower crafts! Here are some from my project files:
http://artsygringa.blogspot.com/2008/08/funky-five-minute-flower-pin-tutorial.html
http://littlelovables.blogspot.com/2009/10/vintage-flower-blossom-tutorial.html
http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2009/06/flower-headband-tutorial.html
I clean them by washing them gently in cold water with mild soap. I take some of them apart for decorating gift baskets and boxes with.
I bet the person who posted the question and said she hates fake flowers has never seen a great quality artificial flower. check out http://www.silk-bouquets.com for some wonderful flowers that a great many people love. There is a growing trend to silk bouquets or brides for example. And the latest ‘real touch’ flowers are pretty amazing in terms of imitation of silk flowers.
I used some old fake flowers to decorate and embellish some giflt cards and give them a new leash of life:
http://kirbyjanecrafty.blogspot.com/2012/03/recycling-fake-flowers-card-decoration.html
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