Flower Making Tutorial

At the end of June I'm giving some craft classes to teenagers as part of a summer school for learning English. Exciting! They'll get to learn the words 'scallop', 'distress' and 'emboss' before they've learned about irregular verbs!

I'll post more about the classes when the time comes, but for now, I'm in preparation mode. A key element of these classes is keeping the costs down - both for me and for the students. So I've decided to make a load of flowers instead of buying them. While I'm waiting for a special punch and emboss product to arrive on my doorstep, I'll settle for these steps:

1: Gather together your paper scraps.

2: Tool up!
3: Prepare the paper: let yourself loose on what you want your flowers to look like. You could use patterned, textured or plain old paper or cardstock:

You could stamp:

Or stamp and emboss:

You could emboss (with a Cuttlebug if you have one, you lucky people):


Or try out any other techniques: paint, glimmer, gloss, flock, distress, acetate...

4: Punch or cut flowers:

5: To achieve a look that is much more textured, much less flat, and much more attractive in general, use an embossing tool (if you have one) or the end of a thin paintbrush (if you don't) and do it by hand. For this technique I used a vellum flower:

With the end of a paintbrush, slowly work on each petal by moving the paintbrush in increasingly larger circles, pressing down quite firmly:

Then turn the flower over and repeat the motion in the centre:


If you like, give the flower extra 'plump' by curling the petals around the paintbrush:


And there you go - no more flatness:


I actually used the grouting lines of my tiled kitchen table for this pink flower to achieve a deeper fold:

6: Store flowers in a really neat box.


And OK, after an afternoon of work, the box is half-filled. Just how many flowers will teenagers want to use, anyhow? Hmmm...don't answer that. I don't want all my work to be in vain!

Card Season

It seems that everybody's celebrating their birthday at the moment (or are making some other kind of celebration if it's not their birthday). I just keep finding I have more cards to make. Here is the latest batch.

I used Webster's Pages ''Postcards from Paris" paper for this one, and the edge of a Sassafrass Lass paper for the scalloped bottom (Life is Beautiful Woodland Whimsy). For the flower, I used up a lot of scraps and cut and embossed the shapes. (For more on this, look out for my next post.) Then I layered lots of different sized flowers to make one big flower, fastening them together with a brad.

The paper featured on this simple Father's Day card is Scenic Route "Argyle", and the stamps are from Inkadinkadoo:

And this card, for my partner's 7-year-old niece, uses paper from a stack of Smirk papers called "Love and Friendship".


I added some ribbon, flowers and sparkly letters, and then double-scalloped the bottom of the card for a pretty, colourful effect:

All in under two hours. It's nice when it works because you've planned ahead :-)

I Tried to Make a Rose

... And I made a little video. Watch out, it's my first video, so it's not perfect. If you can keep up, send me pics of the roses you make :-)




Thanks go to Tim Holtz, my mum, and Mouse Potato Designs.

Fill the House with Flowers

To regain a balance of the masculine and feminine aspects in our household, I am making flowers to put around the house. The latest addition is a flower garland strung up in the WC, which I put in in front of the mirrors so its effect is doubled. I cut the flower shapes in various sizes from an unwanted leaflet, and fixed them together with thread and fishing wire.