If you’re considering or searching for an alternative to fresh wedding flowers, then Cooper Floral Design’s handmade eco paper wedding flowers might just be what you were looking for. We’re sharing a selection of her beautiful wedding bouquets that combine her delicate tissue paper flower creations alongside dried foliage and flowers. We’ll also be hearing more about how she creates her flowers, including dying the paper herself with natural plant dyes.

Sharon has an incredible skill for creating incredibly delicate and realistic flowers from plant dyed papers, and then arranging them into exquisite bouquets alongside dried foliage, flowers and seedheads. Hers is a small eco-friendly wedding business that I get really excited about.

Cooper Floral Design is a Recommended Supplier of The Natural Wedding Company directory. Find out more about them here.

Bespoke wedding bouquets, buttonholes and arrangements

Sharon of Cooper Floral Design handmakes all of the paper flowers used in her floral wedding creations. These are beautiful, unique paper flowers dyed in a subtle palette of natural colours (read more about this below). She has a real talent for combining her handmade paper flowers into exquisite bouquets, buttonholes and arrangements alongside dried flowers, foliage and seedheads.

Bouquets and arrangements are made to order based on your specific wishes, so time is needed to plan and create your wedding flowers. Most of the bouquets featured here on the blog range in price from about £80 to £150. They will last a long time after your wedding too, and I love the idea that you can continue to receive a lot of joy from displaying the flowers in your home long after your wedding day.

What kinds of paper flowers can I choose from?

Sharon has made a wide selection of paper flowers inspired by their natural counterparts. These include Roses (in a variety of styles including Hybrid Tea roses and garden roses), Alstroemeria, Tulips, Peonies, Delphiniums, Coreopsis, and Daisies. She has also experimented with some white paper ferns and simple leaves, which I think look particularly striking.

These are mixed with a variety of natural dried foliages, flowers and seedheads, which have included Pampas grass, Bamboo leaves, wild grasses, ferns, Gypsophila, Eucalyptus, reeds, Hare’s tails, Golden oats, Anemone seed heads and Hazel catkins. Many of these items are foraged from her own Devon woodland and surrounding area.

How are the eco paper flowers made?

All the dyes that Sharon uses come from plant materials sourced locally and prepared in small batches. In order to create a blush pink petal, Sharon’s experiments with natural dyes led her to discover that a combination of onion skins and then over dyeing with beetroot produced the colour paper she was looking for. The papers are dyed then dried before use.

In order to create the most realistic looking flowers, Sharon often uses the natural fresh petal as a template to create her paper petals. The petals are then individually shaped and curled before they’re read to use. Some of the roses she creates even have nine different shaped petals all adding to the flower’s natural look!

Her commitment to sustainability also extends to the glue she uses to attach the petals – a homemade flour based glue that needs time to dry between each petal added. The petals are attached to a rattan stick which is finally covered in a strip of paper, before the flowers are ready to be assembled into bouquets and arrangements.

How do the paper flowers stand up to a rainy wedding?

A big concern of many British brides I can imagine, would be how will paper wedding flowers withstand a rain wedding. Sharon decided to test out her paper flowers in order to provide an answer and some reassurance to those brides with this query.

Sharon placed a small bouquet of her paper flowers outside in her garden on a dampy foggy morning. After nearly 2 hours in the damp garden, the flowers looked a little more translucent but their colours hadn’t changed or run. Some of the petals looked a little flatter than the curled shaped they had started out with. Once dry the rose petals regained their curl and both flowers were opaque again.

Next she mimicked a light drizzle by spraying water over the flowers, which didn’t have any negative effects and they all remained looking the same. Showering the flowers with water did cause one type of paper flower to completely collapse, and the paper rose’s outer petals also collapsed.

Sharon’s advice is: “if you don’t like it, neither will your paper flowers! But on a more serious note it is great to know that your flowers will still look beautiful, even if you have to make a quick dash in the drizzle!”

Read more about the experiment in full with photos on Sharon’s blog.

Contact Sharon to discuss your wedding flowers

If you’ve been inspired by Sharon’s stunning paper wedding flowers and want to explore what she could create for your wedding, get in touch with her.

Drop her a message via our contact form on her TNWC Supplier page.

Visit her website for more information and photos.

Email her with your enquiry and be sure to let her know you came via The Natural Wedding Company.