If you visited us at the Made in Hawaiʻi Festival, you may have noticed one of our biggest handmade creations: a giant paper lei made entirely by our team. Throughout the festival, we received plenty of questions about where we found our decorations. The answer? We made them ourselves!
The idea for the puakenikeni lei came from our Puakenikeni in Deep Lagoon print, which we released earlier this year. We wanted to bring the print to life in a different way while drawing inspiration from the puakenikeni flower itself, an iconic flower in Hawaiʻi and one that holds a special place in our islands’ culture.
Creating the lei was a months-long process of planning, experimenting and plenty of trial and error. From figuring out the right shape and size of the base and petals, to creating the individual flowers, every part had to be tested before we landed on a final design. Our team used a Cricut to help speed up the cutting process, designing both the cone-shaped bases and the individual flower petals.
The puakenikeni lei was just one of the handmade décor pieces our team created for the festival. We also made other decorations using felt, bringing even more of our creativity and personality into our booth.
We change our window display each month, so stop by the store to see what we’ve been creating next and see our next handmade piece in action!
Make Your Own Lei at Home!
Want to make your own puakenikeni or felt flowers at home? We’re making our flower templates available for you to create your own paper lei or floral décor.
Proceeds from each template will be matched and donated to support Hurricane Lala and Lowell recovery efforts.
Create something beautiful, and help give back to our community too!
