There are so many ways to combine art with anything, and chocolate is no exception. Be it making art with chocolate, chocolate bar wrappers or creating art themed around chocolate, it can be such fun.

Lately I have been enthralled with cacao flowers. Their shape, their size, did you know they are teeny tiny? Like about the size of your pinky fingernail. They are such tiny and wonderful bits of beauty that seem so amazing when you think that they turn into cacao pods that can be similar in size to a football. Wow.

On July 20th I designed and made these paper cacao flowers. The vision I had in my head flowed out into my tablet to create the design and then into the design program for the Cricut before being printed and cut and put together with a brad to create a 3D cacao flower.

The paper cacao flower had been rolling around in my head for awhile. I had made a paper sample in 2020 but could not see how I could cut it easily again and again. The beauty of the cacao flower is something I wanted to share with the world, and this is the way I chose to do it.
Honestly it wasn’t perfect, and I tweaked it a bit. The first rendition of it was printed in colour as I didn’t have coloured cardstock. Now I cut the pieces for it from coloured card stock or velum so that it looks more like a cacao flower. I expect I may change it a bit moving forward but for now I am super happy with how it turned out. I’ve played with its size a bit too, and while I am happy to make tiny versions of it, I imagine other folks aren’t wanting an actual size cacao flower.
3 pieces of cut paper, 1 brad, a few curls with a pen and voila, a cacao flower.

Happy Mail for Chocolate Lovers envelopes subscribers received these in their September envelope, and I heard such great feedback about the flowers.
These cacao flowers are now available in my shop. You can purchase a dozen flower pieces to put together yourself. Then you can use them however you wish. I have used them for a mobile, hanging off a branch in a vase, or to explain the cacao flower to people who are unfamiliar with it. There are two different sizes available and 3 or 4 different colour choices.

I also think this would be a great ‘just because’ gift to send to a friend as it will ship easily in a small envelope and can travel far and wide. Perfect when paired with silver or gold foiled cacao flower card, you can order it in several colours and have any sentiment added to the front.
Who doesn’t want a bouquet of cacao flowers?