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...