Happy Rose Day

Hi friends,

Valentines’ day is just 7 days away. Hope you are ready to start the party with us? :)

Wish you a very happy rose day!

Roses have always been identified as messengers of love. Thinking of gifting a rose to your loved one? Here are some creative twists you can add:

– is someone has a sweet tooth, you can order / gift a “Shahi tukda” to him / her. Or you could always prepare it yourself. Get fresh bread toasts and some condensed milk. Warm thoroughly the condensed milk with some normal mil. Spread toast slices in a deep serving dish and add the thick milk over it till the slices are all covered. Sprinkle with elaichi powder, crushed nuts and refrigerate till it is chilled. Garnish it with fresh rose petals and serve with love.

– Gift stores have rose shaped perfume bottles for those fond of fragrances.

– If you have got rose shaped cookie cutters, you can bake rose shaped muffins. Or make rose shaped chocolates.

– Paint a rose yourself. Frame and gift this painting.

– Artificial roses: lots and lots of opportunities here.

If you have a sweet photographs of you two together, create a photo frame and decorate it with paper rose blooms. If you can find rose shaped beads which are slightly big in size, you can create a wind chime with them.

What we tried was creating a rose out of stocking material. We created just one red rose and added two strands with rose beads on them. You can create a bunch of roses too – just repeat the steps for number of roses you wish to create.

Here’s how our gift looks like:

You’ll need:

– Stockings material of the same color as the rose. Red in my case. You can choose pink, white or yellow also.

– Wire – preferably same color or any suitable color. Here in Noida I am finding it hard to get different colors, but down south in Goa we used to get different colored wires. So you can choose the best match available

– Thread

– Green craft tape

– A pair of scissors

– I’ve taken ready made leaves only because I did not get a green colored wire. Else you can make the leaves also yourself just like you’ll be making one of the petals.

– A thicker wire for the stem (not shown in this pic)

Here’s how you go about creating a rose:

– Create petals

– For one petal cut a piece of red wire about 4 cms.

– Create a loop out of it and twist the ends.

– Wrap the stockings material on this loop and gather the ends at the twisted place.

– Secure with thread. Don’t worry about the color of thread. It won’t be seen in the final flower.

Create several petals like this one. Keep increasing the size of the loop, as petals need to get bigger as we move from inside towards outer layer of the flower. You can see 6 finished petals. For this flower we created 10 in all.

Assemble the petals

– Take a thick wire and hold a ball of leftover cuttings from the stockings material. Wrap a layer of stocking material over it and tie securely.

– Wrap petals around this center starting from smallest one first, then a little bigger one and so on …

(oh please ignore my nails.. I didn’t realize they are in that bad a need of a good trimming.. )

Keep adding till you are done with all petals and the rose looks like a cute little bloom.

Add the green receptacle

You can make the receptacle just like you would make petals. Substitute the red wire with green one and red stockings with green one. Unfortunately I did not get the green wire around here. (People didn’t even know it exists, think about that!) But as they say, *necessity is the mother of invention* ;)

I created receptacles for my rose using velvet paper itself.

– Cut two small rectangles – they should be same size and should be able to wrap all around the bud.

– Stick them together wrong sides together, so that the right side faces outside up as well as down.

– Cut into a shape like the below

– Wrap it arou