Carrie Walters at work in her organized and colorful home studio (Photo by Ash Daniel)
Carrie Walters helps men keep secrets from their wives. She only accepts a few requests of this kind each year — she wants to keep them special. They typically go as follows: The husband sends Walters photos for her eyes only, even though she prefers working from the live version. Then, she starts sculpting reproductive organs … of plants, that is.
Walters’ company, Paper Rose Co., is known for its lifelike reproductions of botanicals made from fine crepe paper, which, when crafted to resemble the bride’s bouquet, make ideal gifts for the first wedding anniversary with its traditional gift of paper. “I feel like the co-conspirator of a big surprise,” she says.
Walters spoke with R•Home about some memorable requests, her process and why her arrangements are better than the real deal.
Carrie Walters runs Paper Rose Co. from a sunny studio in her Oilville home where she surrounds herself with inspirational objects and samples of her work. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
R•Home: How did you get into making paper botanicals?
Carrie Walters: It started as a way to get away from computers and screens. I was a graphic designer, which I loved, but it was very tiring because my clients’ branding needs evolved constantly — everything could always be revised. I wanted a craft I could dig into in the evenings after dinner as I was watching TV with my husband. It felt good to spend a couple of hours on something and have a finished product I could put aside.
R•Home: What makes crepe flowers better than their live counterparts?
Walters: If you take care of them — keep them out of direct sunlight and don’t get them wet — they’ll last forever. I still have a batch of the first peonies I made from a Martha Stewart kit in 2007. Artistically, they’re terrible, but physically they’re in great shape. I keep them next to my desk as a reminder of my progress. Plus, compared to other artificial versions, they’re more realistic. Silk flower petals are machine-cut, so there’s a uniform appearance. I cut every petal by hand, which mimics nature.
R•Home: You started out using kits, but these days your repertoire includes hundreds of specimens. What’s your process like now?
Walters: I don’t work from templates, so over the spring and summer I source and grow tons of different varieties [of flowers]. Then I dissect them and catalogue those dissections. Sometimes, I’ll spend a year studying their forms. When I do a [bouquet] re-creation, I’ll pick out little discerning characteristics from the client’s photo, like maybe the peonies in that specific bouquet had color variations that I can pull out with inks and watercolor. I make sure the special characteristics match. I also work from memory and my own knowledge of how things are going to unfold.
If it’s something I can’t source, like a moonflower, I go off of a photo. My mom was a biology teacher; I have a lot of her old textbooks that have the anatomy and taxonomy of flowering plants with botanical illustrations. I find them helpful because they give cross-sections of plants so I can see what the center of the flower looks like, or what type of stamen it has.
R•Home: What’s the most unusual custom order you’ve created?
Walters: I just finished a Star of Bethlehem. They’re not very common, and local florists only get them occasionally, around Christmas. I had to resort to using one of those garden identification apps to figure out what it was. Then I worked from lots of different photos from botanical gardens and other sources online to piece together my take on it.
Another bride hit me up with a moonflower. I’d never seen one in real life, but it’s the perfect use for paper because it only blooms at night — you’re not going to get an open moonflower for a daytime wedding. I’m always game for a challenge!
Walters does a bustling online business through her website. Here, a wrap station is ready to process and package orders. (Photo by Ash Daniel)
R•Home: What other kinds of requests do you get?
Walters: One woman wanted Eschscholzia poppies, a variety native to California that had grown in a valley behind her grandparents’ house. She lives in Boston now; she’s not getting those flowers in Boston. She gave them to her sisters as a reminder of their childhood.
Another woman requested a variety of rose that only blooms once in a while, to give to her mother after her grandmother died. It had grown in her grandmother’s yard, but they had to sell the house.
R•Home: Why do you think the tradition of giving flowers on Valentine’s Day is such a time-honored one?
Walters: Flowers as a gift get shrugged off a lot — ‘That’s too easy’ — and that bothers me. So many people are so happy receiving flowers, especially in the winter when everything is bleak, dreary and gray: that hope of nature and spring coming into your environment helps. There’s lots of research around the positive effects of flowers on depression. If you’re having a bad day or just want a little treat for yourself, you can grab a little bundle while you’re grocery shopping; it’s so satisfying and uplifting.
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Each year, Walters accepts a few commissions to recreate wedding bouquets as anniversary gifts. (Photo courtesy Paper Rose Co.)
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Walters studies live flowers and photos of flowers to learn how to create her paper specimens, such as this sweet pea. (Photo courtesy Paper Rose Co.)
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Photo courtesy Paper Rose Co.
R•Home: You source lots of flowers to dissect and catalog for reference. What do you grow yourself?
Walters: Five different varieties of David Austin roses — Benjamin Britten, Lady of Shalott, Molineux, Desdemona, The Generous Gardener — and many different peonies, some from my childhood home in Pennsylvania that my mom has helped transplant as I’ve moved around Richmond. She’s also added daffodils, irises, primrose, hellebore and hyacinth — to make sure something is always blooming.
R•Home: So gardening runs in the family?
Walters: My mom is a gardening nut. I used to roll my eyes when she would take photos of all of the plants we encountered on our family vacations, and now I’m doing the exact same thing. You really do turn into your mother!
