Repurpose pre-loved pages into Corinne Bradd’s stunning paper decorations

What you need...

• Wooden blanks: letters, heart
  
• Paper: music, text
  
• Bakers twine
  
• Ink-pad, gold
  
• Paint, acrylic: white, taupe, gold
  
• Die-cutting machine, Sizzix, Big Shot
  
• Die, Sizzix, Tattered Florals
  
• Ribbon, white/taupe
  
• Gems, flat-back, adhesive
  
• Adhesives

instructions

1. Paper Heart - 1 Glue flat book pages to the front of a heart blank, then leave to dry and trim the edges. Sponge with white paint to obscure some of the text and follow with taupe, then colour the edges of the heart with gold.
   
   2 Die-cut several different flowers from book pages. Curl the petals over the blade of a pair of scissors and glue together into blooms. Arrange and fix the flowers onto the right-hand edge of the shape.
   
   3 Trim fringe to 2cm, then roll around a cocktail stick and glue to make a flower centre. Add centres to several of the flatter flowers, then tie a long length of striped ribbon through the hole at the top of the shape to hang.

2. Confetti Cones - Trim music paper, 14cm square, then roll into a cone and secure with double-sided tape. Die-cut several flowers in different sizes, then curl each petal over the blade of a pair of scissors before layering together with glue. Adhere a flower to the top edge of the cones and decorate with a single adhesive gem.

3. Kusudama Decoration - 1 Trim the pages of a book into squares, 12cm across. Each will be folded into a single petal, each flower has five petals and it takes twelve flowers to make a ball. Fold a square in half to make a triangle. Keeping the fold at the bottom, bring the two outer points up to the top, making a square.
   
   2 Fold each uppermost flap back on itself halfway. Open the folded flaps, place your finger inside and squash fold to make a kite shape on each side of the central square. Fold down the top points of the kite to line up with the edge of the square, then fold the outer edge of the kite shape back over.
   
   3 Run a thin line of glue along one folded edge, then fold over and fix to the other edge without creasing the paper. This creates a cone petal with folded stamens inside. Clip the glued edges with a small peg while it dries, if necessary. Take five folded petals and stick along the folded edges.
   
   4 Stick these petals together in a stack and hold with pegs. When dry, open out and adhere the first and last pieces together to make the flower. When you have made twelve, glue them together into a ball. Make a small hole through the tip of one set of petals and thread with natural twine to hang.

4. Mr & Mrs - 1 Use diluted PVA glue to coat the front of a wooden letter. Lay a sheet of music over the \top, flatten by rubbing with a cloth, then leave to dry. Place the letter print-side down on a cutting mat and trim away the excess paper with a craft knife. Turn over and coat the letter with PVA to seal.
   
   2 Repeat for all the letters and tie together on a length of twine, spacing them evenly. Create several kusudama petals as described previously, using 4cm squares of pages. Before glueing into flowers, cut 1cm off the bottom. Use a gold ink-pad to colour the top edges, then adhere to the letters at
   random with thick PVA.