Flowers with love

Evening everyone, we have had a lovely day as a family today. We were meant to meet some friends for lunch but unfortunately they had to cancel so instead we took little monkey to the cinema after which Craig entertained Ethan so I could do a bit of clothes shopping because lets face it I don't think either of them would enjoy standing outside changing rooms while I try on hundreds of outfits and then only buying one! When we met up again my lovely husband surprised me with a gorgeous bracelet with amethyst stones in, I absolutely love it. He really makes me feel loved exactly when I need it!

The way I feel is fitting for today's post as I have been decorating hearts today for the Summer Fair next week (See my Itty Bitty Baby Girl post for more details on the fair). I will show you a picture of the finished product first and then there is a small tutorial on how to make the roses. This is my favourite of them all but I have done a variety of colours and there are also a couple made with fringe flowers (explained below).

Closed Rose: This one is so simple and fun to make, you just need the Spiral Flower Originals Die and a BigShot. When you run this through the BigShot you can use a piece of card stock that is A6 (A quarter of A4) and you can cut up to three at a time so you can create multiple flowers in one go. This is what you start with once your card has gone through the Big Shot:

The next step is to run your bone folder along the inner curl so that it starts to curl up like this:

The longer the stroke the bigger the curl, if you do lots of short strokes it becomes smaller and tighter. Once you have your flower looking similar to this take the narrow end and start to wrap it around a pencil to help get you started. Remove the pencil after a couple of turns and keep winding it round until you reach the wider end. The tighter you wind it, the smaller the flower so experiment a bit to achieve the size you are after. The two large circles at the end form the base of the flower like so:

The 'base' can then be glued using hot melt glue, glue dots or liquid glue. As I will be selling the finished products I opted for the hot melt glue just to make sure they stayed stuck.

Open Rose: The open rose is probably easier to make but takes that bit longer. I used the 1 1/4" circle punch to create mine but you can use any circle size, the larger the circles the bigger the finished flower. I cut 12 circles from my chosen card stock (in this example Real Red) and used my paper snips to cut a straight line from one side to the centre of the circle. The two edges are stuck together to form a small cone. Once I had all my cones I glued three together to form the centre and then kept adding circles round the edge until I was happy with the finished flower. You don't have to use all 12 or you could even use more. To finish it off I then stuck a Very Vintage Button into the centre of the flower.

Fringe Flowers (not pictured): Although I have not pictured the fringe flowers here you can see them here on the Burlap and Blooms Wreath. These were made by cutting a two inch wide strip from the designer series paper of my choice. The strip was then folded in half length ways and stuck down with sticky strip to form a one inch wide strip. Once stuck down I then put another section of sticky stripe on the edge that hadn't been folded and used my fringe scissors to cut from the folded edge to where the sticky strip was. The backing was then taken off the sticky strip and the paper rolled together. The fringes were then spread out to form the flower.

Sorry about the long post tonight! Hopefully I haven't lost anyone along the way.

Supplies:

All supplies are from Stampin' Up! unless otherwise stated.

Card: Real Red Card Stock, Real Red and Rich Razzleberry Designer Series Paper 

Tools and Embellishments: Wicker Hearts (Not SU), Bone Folder, Pencil, Very Vintage Designer Buttons, Hot Glue Gun (Not SU), Fringe Scissors, Sticky Strip, 1 1/4" Circle Punch, BigShot and Spiral Flower Originals Die

If you would like to order any Stampin' Up! products feel free to contact me using the details at the top of the page or alternatively you can order from Stampin' Up! directly using the button on the right remembering to find my name in the demonstrator list before completing your purchase!