Big Blossoms Tutorial

Hello my lovely blog friends and followers old and new, thank you so much for taking the time to have a peek at my blog.  I would also like to thank everyone for leaving me so many lovely comments recently, it really means a lot to me.

Over the last couple of months a few people have admired my big flowers and some have said they would love to make them so I am doing my first ever tutorial - forgive me it is not perfect, especially the photos, but will, at least, give you a general idea of how to make them.

The flowers, when completed will measure approximately 2.1/2" (6 - 7cm) across, you can make them much smaller than this but the large size is perfect for putting on gift boxes, tags etc and the larger size is easier to show you on the 'how to' side.  My thinking is that I have lots of Christmas papers that are heavily patterned and not really appropriate for small cards so I am going to make up a batch of flowers to use on presents and gift tags.

I always use good quality card stock, Coredinations if possible or something of a similar weight for the plain colours and Tim Holtz patterned card/BoBunny or Kaisercraft or similar weight patterned cardstock.  You will see why once we get going.

For this tutorial I have used a nested set of flower dies by Go Kreate (flower set #1) but Spellbinders also do a nested flower set which also works and so does Tim Holtz Tattered Floral die set.

You will need to cut one of the largest size and two each of the rest of the sizes so that you end up with 7 flower die cuts for each flower, the same applies to other dies, you really need 7 to give a good result.

Take a spritzer and soak the die cuts well, they will rise up in the middle at this point.  Turn them over and spritz the other side really well.  From now on you will need to work reasonably quickly as the card dries quite fast.

Now for the fun bit - scrunch the flowers up really well (sorry about the blurry photo), you can also pick up any water on your mat or craft sheet with the scrunched up flowers.

Gently open the flowers out and poke a hole in the middle of each flower. You can put the hole in earlier if you wish, some flower dies come with a hole in already, like Spellbinders rose creations, which is handy.

Put the flowers together in size order, with a brad, try to stagger the petals as in the photo so that the resulting flower will look more realistic.

Take each of the layers and squeeze them up around the brad, be careful with the card as it will rip easily due to being so wet.  Do each layer separately as this will give a much better result.

You should end up with a scrunched up flower like this one.  Now you need to gently open the flower up.  You can open it right up or simply bend some of the petals down to make a tight flower, it is up to you at this stage.  I tend to open them right up like this:

Whilst the flower is still damp you can tweak it to make it look realistic.  At this point you can spritz it with Perfect Pearls or similar,  to give it a bit of a sheen.  Now, put the flower to one side and leave it to dry, it can take quite a while (even overnight) as there is a lot of card to dry.  Once it is dry, the flower is almost rock hard and will not lose it's shape at all. 

This is the one completed in the plain card.  I do hope you will try this technique, it is so much fun to do.  You can even make a bouquet of them by gluing kebab sticks to the back.  I have used them to decorate boxes, on tags and on a 12" x 12" canvas like this one below:

The plain flower is the one I have made using the above instructions, the patterned ones are made using Tim Holtz Tattered Floral die and the smaller one at the bottom is made using just the smaller dies in the Go Kreate set. So don't be put off thinking you have to make large ones, it works equally well for small flowers too.  The beauty of this method is that the resulting flower is very hard and will not go out of shape easily.

Apologies for the blurry photos, my little camera does not like close-ups, I will get better with time......I hope!

If you do visit I hope you will leave me a comment, I do love to read them all and I will always try to return the compliment.  Crafty hugs, Anne xx