A companion materials kit is available from Petals and Pearls. Link takes you to the online Petals and Pearls shop listing. 

This paper art form is such a big part of my life… it’s a full time commitment and it has  enriched my creative universe. 

Paper flowers helped me rediscover the artistry and expressiveness from deep within. Throughout my childhood I drew a lot, mostly nature but also fashion sketches. At school I  studied painting and graphic art but I majored in fashion design so, all of these skills  revived through the creative process of making paper flowers. I find my inspiration in  nature and make drawings to better understand and transpose the shapes into templates. I develop the color theme and paint the paper accordingly, as if the crepe paper is my canvas  and the flowers, my finished painting. These artistic skills mixed with the paper flower  techniques learned and developed over time, helped transform my original paper blooms into the equivalent of an art piece. 

My aesthetic goals are to replicate nature and make everlasting flowers, presented as single  stems or bouquets, with highly coordinated, subtle and natural looking color schemes, in pastel variations, with a few strong but muted colors. All of these are showcased through  style fine art imagery of dreamy setups and complex flower spreads displayed on painted  backdrops. 

Mother Nature is the most powerful and unique creator there is and everything I see is a  source of inspiration and astonishment. I’m looking forward to the future, to discover

where this journey will lead… at the moment I’m adapting my techniques into exploring  and creating paper fruits, a new artistic manifestation, which I hope will open the door for  many more exciting projects. 

The glorious and regal pomegranate was my choice for this course, with its one-of-a- kind  shape, vibrant pink-red tones, oblong lace-shaped leaves and attractive flowers. I chose this  fruit because it makes me think of the warm Mediterranean sunny days in Italy, Spain or  Greece, all places I visited and treasure so much. 

The inspiration for this project – a tree branch with buds, leaves, flowers and fruits – came naturally after doing my research. The pomegranate tree is self – pollinating and has male-female flowers called “perfect blossoms” that will ultimately produce fruits. I find this  natural process unique and fascinating. The tree develops buds at the end of the branches,  which will blossom from spring to fall, in more than three stages. So, at some point during  summer, you can see a pomegranate tree with buds, flowers and fruits on the same branch,  as one of my friends saw in Greece this year, and as you can also see in the accompanied  guides with reference images. 

My personal twist to this natural inspiration source was to add the half fruit with seeds, as  a focus point, this being the most challenging and complex part of our journey. 

This online video-based course is suited for both beginners and advanced artists. You will  learn the necessary skills to create a paper pomegranate, using a basic list of materials. If  you feel comfortable and confident enough, you can go deeper into this course and learn  how to make the buds, flowers and leaves. I will show you how to obtain a lifelike  expression by painting all of the elements with acrylics and also, how to build and color a  half-fruit with seeds.  

The final challenge is putting all of these elements together to assemble a pomegranate tree  branch. I’ve made a few of these branches that I keep in a vase and enjoy every day in my  studio, but I also have a few individual fruits, designed in a different range of vibrant ocher pink and red shades, that I keep in a bowl on my coffee table. If you decide to enroll in this  creative journey with me, I’m sure you will find many uses for all the knowledge and  inspiration I will share, either to make a decoration project for your home, or dive deeper  in this crafty art form that I dearly love.