Finishing flower Marianne Designs Collectables COL1323.....

Hi Friends,

First, I want to send rose photos to my friends who love my garden shares and to brighten up your day!  After a rainfall, I ran outside to capture the water drops left on the rose.  It was pretty.

 It makes me smile every time,  I hope it does you as well.

Next I am finishing the flower I had started by showing you how to make handmade fat stamens for this type of one layered flower.  So easy and it sure adds a bright element to any of your craft projects.

Here we go, material you will need:
I am using a Marianne Designs Collectables COL1323 using 2 smallest of the 3 flowers.

The photos also have descriptions on them, enjoy!

Refer to photo for material required

 

Tools no described in the photo are reverse tweezers, needle tool, stylus and the unused eraser of a pencil

 

Main step photos of this flower creation

I made this mix from Inkjet printer ink mixed with water until desired hue is obtained.  You can also use any water based re-inkers you have in your possession.  The reason I like inkjet printer ink, is that it is highly concentrated so less ink is needed. 

 Always have paper towels on your workstation, if you spill ink, it is easily contained. It will also absorb the excess ink after bathing it. 

 If you want quick results, you may dry your flowers with a heat tool as per seen on here.  Make sure you use a reverse tweezers while holding the flower to dry.

 If you were wanting to blend the darker pink inside the flower, you can use a water spritzer to blend the darker into the lighter color, this can be seen when the stamen is in place when the flower is completed.

 On wrong side of the flower, in a circular motion press down on each petal to cup them.

 Press down on right side of the flower as per shown

 Almost done..........

 In the last tutorial photo, the middle flower is the one I just made and the glue is still white until it is dry.  In the future, some elements won't be repeated to make the tutorials shorter.  So for instance, bathing the flower will not come back.  Please follow blog for flower evolution

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial. 

Thank you for learning if it was new to you, and visiting because you are a dedicated follower, either way, I am happy you visited.  Next post should be a card I made.  Come back soon!

Have a wonderful day!

 



flower making for beginners.....

Hi friends,

Today I want to take this post to tell you about flower making in general.  If you are new to this craft, this is for you.  If you have made a few flowers in the past, this can still be for you.

Here is a photo of some of the items I frequently use to make my flowers.  But not all tools are necessarily used for all flowers.  This is what I call the BASIC tool kit if you are into flower making or wish to be.  Of course there are also tools you may have that can replace the ones I am showing you here.  So if you have such tools, use what you have.  No need to go and buy so much, you never know if you will like making flowers or not, until you try it, so use what can work for now.

I have omitted some important tools I usually use, on purpose.  If you are a beginner you want to start by making simple shapes and be able to master the cupping on cardstock with your stylus tools.  (coming in different sizes and also sold in sets including the shaping pad).

 

What I use the most......Shaping pad, water spritzer, stylus of different sizes,  reverse tweezers, a needle tool is also a good tool to have.  I also use a quilling tool, next to the scissors in the photo above.  Most of what is needed we as crafters have most of it already.

 

A mouse pad can also be used temporarily until you know if you are wanting to buy a kit including stylus and tweezers...

 

1.  First with a stylus of the appropriate size (lesser size stylus than the petal size) is needed.  On the wrong side of the die cut flower, cup one petal at a time by pressing on the edges of the petal, you will see the paper buckle under pressure, you do all petals the same way, another way I can describe this is, in circular motion, run the stylus around all petals. 

 

Note:  If you are using a mouse pad, the cupping will be slightly less pronounced since the pad is thinner than the pad purchased for that purpose.  So no worries, you are trying for now.

2. Once all petals are formed, turn flower right side up and apply pressure in the middle of the flower to shape the flower and bring the cupped petals upward toward you.  This flower is shaped.

 

This is what you should have, not flat anymore.  Right now the way it is, it is open for a nice half pearl in the middle or before you cup the flower you can also add some color, with markers or stamping the middle with the eraser of a pencil.  Use ink pad for this and stamp the color to the middle of the flower, then cup like it was done in step 1 and 2.

 

If you want to try another basic way to make sturdier flowers, when you stamp the middle of the flower as per described above, for this use a paper towel put your stamped middle flower onto the paper and spritz with water to try and blend the ink into a more natural fading look.  Let it dry or dry with heat tool for a few seconds, use reverse tweezers to hold the flower with while drying it with heat tool or simply let it dry for a while.  Then proceed with cupping and forming your flower as per above instructions.  The shaping will feel a little stiffer than when you don't add water to your flower.  I make most of my flowers from wetting first, color bath, drying, then shaping petals, etc.

 

In a future blog soon, I will show the finished flower including the bathing of my basic flower up to the finished flower with the fat stamen tutorial I posted yesterday in a few days...

 

This is the very basic of flower making.  This means you can apply this technique to all form of petals or use different techniques like for instance pinching the end of each petal after cupping them.  This is open for experimenting on your part.  Play, experiment with your flowers....you might just surprise yourself!

 

I hope this was fun and stay with us for more fun tutorials to come.  Coming soon, I will have photos on how to do the spiral flowers, there are many types out there, but all are made in the same basic way.  Had many requests on this one.......Keep watching for it.

 

Have a wonderful day and thank you for visiting and commenting, I'm loving this...

 

 



 

A small stamen making photo tutorial to share

Hi dear followers,

Today, I want to share how to make your own stamens from scratch.  Very few items are needed for this.  Here is the list

You will need:

Fast grab glue (dries clear)
A small quantity of paper clay (air dry) I buy white so I can dye it the color I need (best choice)
Flowersoft white wire cut in 2 inches length 
Re-inker ink (water based).  I used Memento Dandelion but use what you have on hand.

Instructions:
Roll a small quantity of paper clay in the palm of your hand (about an inch size ball) prepare to have enough to make dozens of stamens with this quantity of clay. 

You want to change the clay from white to yellow, add one drop of water based re-inker after pressing a hole in your formed ball.  Then close the hole and start mixing the color into the clay.  This will be messy.  It washes off nicely after the color is mixed in.  Keep your colored clay in a sealable (Ziploc) bag sealed with a damp sponge.  If not, your clay will dry quickly.  If the yellow color is not dark enough, repeat the same steps.  If you add more than a drop of ink, your clay will start decomposing sticky to your hand until it starts drying again.

Prepare a dozen of cut wires of about 2 inches length.  It is easier to make 2 stamens on the same wire, that way when you need only one, cut in the center of the wire. 

Photo shows a large sponge at the bottom of the bag.  A small plastic bowl on top, where you sit your clay in so it absorbs some humidity, no water should touch the clay.

 

Always leaving your clay in the Ziploc bag only pinch a small quantity at a time out of the bag.  Immediately start rolling the clay as you will see the size if it is too big, split the clay into many portions, but try and work with 2 portions at a time and leave the rest in the bag to keep it moist.

 

 

Not all stamens will come out the same size.  But the smaller the rolled ball the better. 

Final step is to add each finished ball to the end of the wire.  Push it in at least to the half point and with thumb and index, roll between fingers to smoothen up the look of it. (see picture) Add one more to the other end and repeat the steps, leave it aside to dry, I usually let them dry for an hour.  The glue will be used to put the stamen into position.  (next tutorial)

I hope that was of some help to you and the next tutorial will be of making this flower or something similar so you can use your stamens.

Tutorials are time consuming but oh so fun to prepare.  As soon as I get the flower to fit the stamens ready, I will post it here.  It would be a good idea to sign up as a follower to not miss any future posts. 

Come back soon!



Welcome back everyone, I have another card to share today

Hi readers,

Today I am sharing a new card I recently made, yes you guessed it, more flowers,  I used the Spellbinders Rose Creations die set S5-050 cut to make these focal point flowers. I mixed some Lumin-Art Shimmering mist with a pink re-inker color I had in my stash to make this somewhat pink-coral color and used a paper punch for the pistils and cut it in black. Some roses have 4 layers and some have only 3.  It depends on how much body you want in your flower, the more layers, the fullest generous look you will get.  The background is another Spellbinders die A2 Tranquil Moments S5-216.

The smallest flowers were made with the help of a sun shape paper punch.  I cut out a small circle off the center of the sun and twisted it in a circular motion with reverse tweezers to get a cute small flower.

 



 

I added a small lady bug on one of the left hand side leaves

 

Keep in mind that I always use a foam pad to form all of my flowers.  This is how you get dimension.  When I will post on how to make flowers and what you should need to make them, I will mention more about this craft.

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this new card

 

 

Have a fun day!  Thanks for visiting

 



I am participating in a Challenge and here is my card....

Hi readers,

Today is a fun day as I get to post this card I have spent a few hours (days) making and loved the final look after I was done adding and adding lol.  Don't we all do this, you get back to your card a few minutes or hours later and, sure enough, there is more we want to change.  In fact, there is a point where we have to know, it's good enough!  There is a fine line for this type of judgment in our work, to know when to call it quits.

So here it is:

Well, this is it!  It was quite a few hours (days) in the making.  I really like the final product.  If you ever start a project like this one I can only advise you to pick a Theme that you will be able to expand on.  By that, I mean, I had a Birthday theme in mind and that wasn't enough.  I had to pick a color scheme as well as deciding if I put flowers on it, how am I going to display them without changing too much the rest of the work. 

 

So many things went into this project.  I hope you can see well enough, the boxes were templates that were given for the challenge.  I printed different sizes of them on pattern paper, I kept in the feminine theme by adding a fan, a little music embellishments, some glitter, I had to cut out a lot of leaves, color them with sponge daubers of 3 to 4 green colors and a rusty color to give it more dimension.  It has been so much fun.  I will have to make another one of a simpler version to save time on it.  But I am giving you the link so you can decide if you want to participate in this challenge online.  For the challenge address and template click here  Not sure if they will be posting all of the participant's cards or not.

 

If I may give you another tip, it is that when you make the boxes be neat in fussy cutting the boxes, or you will have to cut again on the edges if it isn't straight.  It had to look perfect when the box was put together I didn't want to see black lines sticking out.

 

I hope you have enjoyed it!  Thank you for visiting and signing up as a follower.  I hope to see you back here again soon

Welcome to my new blog, (answered question update)

Hi Readers,  Welcome!

This is my introductory new blog's first official post!  YEY!!!!!!!!!!  You posted many comments on my old blog and the most overwhelming surprising ones by emails triggered my wanting to go ahead and create a new blog, starting from scratch for all of you faithful followers as well as the newer ones and the ones to come.  I have listened.  You wanted more flowers, more cards, more gardening photos, you got it!

Yes, you are here on my new blog, dedicated to the making of flowers, sometimes tutorials, gardening and more.

Today I am sharing a beautiful, colorful card I made with once again the use of all previously handcrafted flowers I made in June and July.  I have a few photos to show as I had to continue the blog I had started back in 2006 rolling into this one. I want to make a smooth transition and post some of the same photos I had shared with you in the previous blog posts that will stay up and running for a while longer.  So if you see "DEJA VUE" photos on here, it is for that reason. 

Just to show a few

Please go ahead and sign up as a follower sign up for email subscription to receive my newsletters every time I post something new.  Help me reach my first HUNDRED followers soon.

If you are totally new to my blogging, I admit I'm guilty of loving comments left on here when you are visiting so, always feel free to say a few word and ask questions if you have any.  I'm well aware that there are thousands of videos and tutorial photos online on how to make paper flowers, I have my own little methods too as I'm sure we all get at ease with when we have practiced and made a few tips of our own.  I am not re-inventing the wheel here, I'm just showing you what I made and sometimes give you a little bit of a photo tutorial showing different twists to make them stand out more.

In the next post I will tell you more but for now, I'm sharing this card with you and see if you will blow me out of the water with the number of comments you will leave for me.  Don't be shy, I leave so many comments everywhere I just hope to read some here as well.  Getting some love back is so amazing.  Thank you in advance!

Yet, another flower card.  This time it is a wreath (2 layers).  I have colored some pistils to add sparingly around the wreath as well as some tiny pompoms.  I have use an Ivy cuttings a friend had sent me to add more interest to the card.  Glitter was used, 1 1/2 inch silk ribbon topped the wreath card.  I use a lot of Digital paper and this was one of the papers I have in my stash. 

 



 I hope this is giving you some inspiration for your next Birthday card

 

Have fun trying

 

One more thing......If you ever wonder why I am going quickly with my descriptions, I am encouraging you to use the dies you already have on hand.  Any 5 petal flowers you may have will do.

**UPDATE ANSWER**

The blue stamens on the card are from if you live in the USA, any craft store that sells Wilton's Cake Baking Products.  It comes in packages of 3 kinds of stamens, all in white in this case, and I give it a blue water based bath

 

 

 

This was fun preparing this first card for my new blog opening.  There is much more to come this week so come back and check it out.  Thank you for visiting I appreciate all of the comments on here or by email.

 

 

Have a fun week ahead!