How to Make a Dog Out of Wood Flowers!

We love our animals (as we should!). Here is a cute way to create a fun home decor piece based on your pet or a sweet gift idea for your friends and family of their beloved pets!

This is Maya!

Maya is our inspiration pup for this project. She works in our warehouse with her momma, Maggie #1 (who is also the co-owner of Oh You're Lovely!). Eeeep. That face! 

What You'll Need:

Here is what I used to make this sola wood flower pup:

• Wood flowers from Oh You're Lovely (for this recreation, I used zinnies of different sizes for her shape and a maya flower for her tail)
• A 4.5"-6" container (this can be anything you have around the house!)
• A foam block cut down to size to fill the container
• Beads for eyes and nose (Link to the assortment I bought in the materials section!)
• Greenery and sola wood flowers to decorate around the dog shape!

Choose Your Flowers to Create the Dog Shape!

If you look at the adorable inspiration picture of Maya the pup, you can see that her head and ears are adorably larger than her little body and legs. So I used the largest zinny for her head, medium sized flowers for her body and ears and the smallest for her legs/paws. I did also add a munchkin zinny on her head to make the nose more pronounced.

I like laying the flowers out on a flat surface to make sure the shape is what I'm looking for and what adjustments I may need to make. Much easier to do before they are dyed and stemmed!

Trim the Flowers to Shape Them!

Maya's ears are more of a triangle shape so before dyeing the flowers, I grabbed a pair of scissors and trimmed that shape on the flowers.

Two things to note:

1. Be careful not to trim the string on the bottom of the flower. This is what holds the petals together! Instead, focus on trimming the outside of the petals.
2. Trim over a garbage can or over something where you can easily gather up the flower bits you are removing!

Dye the Flowers!

Since the zinny has so much texture to it already, I just dip dyed my flowers in Apple Barrel Nutmeg Brown paint mixed with water. If your dog has a white patch on his/her belly or pink inside the ears, you can use an air brush to paint those sections or you can also hand paint the details!

After the flowers were dry, I stemmed them onto 18 gauge wire.

Assemble the Dog Shape!

For this assembly, I started at the bottom of the body and built up! First I added her paws, then the body flower, then added the head. You can see that I made sure the flowers were touching so there were no gaps. Next I added the ears behind the head flower and popped in the tail pretty far behind the rest. We will be filling in that section with greenery and flowers so no worries about the gap between the front of the dog and the tail!

Complete the Face!

The kit I purchased from Amazon for the eyes and nose has so many choices for eye color and nose shapes! I chose brown eyes and a small, slightly triangle nose for Maya. Once you have the placement where you like it, add a drop of hot glue to the back of the eye or nose and add it to the flower.

 Add Greenery and Flowers to Finish!

I added the greenery first to fill the gaps between the front portion of Maya and her tail. This also helped me bring some height to the arrangement. Then I added in the pink baby's breath and pom pom flowers to bring in more color!

Bonus Video!

Stefanie's girl Josie needed to be made into a sola flower pup as well so here she is! Click here or on the pic below to see the Facebook live tutorial of Stefanie making this cute arrangement!

How cute would these be as gifts for friends with furbabies or as an addition to your home? Let us know in the comments if you have tried to make a flower animal yet!