Money Bouquet

CHA posts coming eventually, I promise!

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Here's the latest money-themed gift I gave my nephew, Timothy. Because what 15-year old boy wouldn't want a flower bouquet, amirite? 

I've seen dollar bills used for all sorts of origami, so my plan was to get colorful foreign bills and use those to make flowers. Easy, right? As it turns out, no.

Step 1 was easy enough. I went to Wells Fargo and had the following conversation:

Teller: May I help you?

Me: Yes. I need colorful money. The color of flowers, like pink, purple, orange, or yellow.

Teller: (blank look)

Me: Foreign bills in colors that are not green. Colorful. From different countries. Totaling around $30-50 US.

Teller: Which countries would you like? 

Me: Doesn't matter, as long as they're colorful.

Teller: So.... any bills in any denomination from any country in the world as long as they're colorful?

Me: Yes.

I went on to explain my concept. The teller was so interested that she handed me her card and asked me to email her a photo of the completed project. (Shout out to Leanne and the other outstanding folks at the Wells Fargo on Browns Valley!) She brought me a wad of colorful bills and we worked together to choose ones that would look good together and land in my price range. I ended up with a 10 Euro, a Canadian 10, a Fijian 10, and two Mexican 50s. I added some crisp US 1's to use as greenery and was all set.

I practiced making an origami flower on a dollar bill I had laying around. It's very simple - just fold the bill accordion style, fold the accordion in half, tape the two ends together and then do the same to the other side. It forms a perfect flower....

... unless you're using money that isn't actually made of paper. Which is the case for each of the bills I got. Darn it. These plastic bills did NOT want to fold. When you do an accordion fold on a US dollar and let go, it holds its shape. Here you can see how the Canadian bill behaved after the accordion fold, plus what the Mexican bill looked like after I taped the two ends together.  

Time to get serious. Glue Dots to the rescue! After doing an accordion fold and taping the edges, I added Glue Dots inside all of the interior folds, which I then hid behind a coin. 

I used more Glue Dots to attach skewers to the backs of each flower, then inserted them into the basket. After arranging each flower, I filled in with green paper grass and simple US dollar 'leaves' (each held in shape with a single Glue Dot).

In the end, I'm very happy with how it turned out, even if it did take Timothy 15 minutes to remove all the Glue Dots from just a handful of bills. If I ever make this same project, I'm going to ask the folks at the bank for colorful, paper-based currency... no plastic money. That would make it a heck of a lot easier.