How To Make A Carrot With Orange Tulips
I came across a photo of a carrot made with tulips a couple years back and saved it knowing I wanted to make one myself. The first year I went to make it, I traveled to many different craft stores in search of orange tulips for this carrot craft, but I waited too long into the season and all were sold out.
This past week, I received a coupon for 60% off all items, including sale items from Michaels Craft Stores and I went in hopes of finding the orange tulips. I was in luck! I found two bunches of tulips and one stem of greens that I thought would work for the carrot top (the one I wanted was not in stock). I would have purchased three bunches of tulips and a second stem of greens, but I took what I could get.
Things needed to make a carrot out of tulips
Heavy gauge wire or bolt cutters
Two or three large bunches of orange tulips - (the tulips I used are fabric since mine will be under a portico. This link is to orange latex tulips I found that might be better if your carrot of tulips will be exposed to the elements.
One or two stems of long flowing greens
Green ribbon or ribbon of choice (a check would look cute too!)
Since the bunches of orange tulips had different color variations, I first focused on the darkest, richest orange stems.
With strong wire cutters cut all of the stems off at the base EXCEPT for the longest center stem. PS: My cutters are small bolt cutters I picked up at our local hardware store. I do wish they opened a bit more at the mouth for larger stems since I did end up cutting off the end of the bunch’s stem and it took a lot of little snips to get through all of the plastic and the metal.
Below you can see how I left the longest orange tulip on the stem to use as my base for making the carrot. Keep in mind I was winging it on this project. There many ways one could make this carrot tulip and if I make it again, I might try one of my other ideas.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I wish there was another bunch so that I had more tulips, but what I did next was took all of the deepest orange tulips and bound them together by criss-crossing the stems. I already had my single tulip, so then I proceeded to bind two, then three, then four (which used up all of my deep orange tulips for the carrot).
I forgot to photograph the next step, but I then laid the bound tulips on top of the longest stem and wrapped them on with wire. Once they were on, I filled the gaps with the remaining tulips; some being placed on the inside of the tulip carrot and some were placed on the outside to add width. I hope that makes sense.
Since there was only pick/stem of greens, I cut off all of the greens at the bas then I cut off some of the longest ends to use as the top. I attached the greens to the top of the tulip carrot so that the were pointing upward (as the do when growing out of the ground), then I took the rest of the greens and added them to each side of the carrot made with tulips.
I forgot to buy a ribbon so I grabbed some green raffia ribbon I had on hand to see how it looked. I like it a lot, but I think I might look for a cute blue and white or black and white check ribbon. Oh heck, it might even be green and white. I won’t know until I see it.
The last step I did on this carrot was to add a wire look around the stem so that I could hang it.
