Say It’s Handmade With Flowers

Good morning! Sharon here, I’ve been playing with paper flowers and made a sweet card that is handmade for you.

Let me take you on the journey to make it. You will need to choose your color theme. As you can see I’m using my favorites lilac and purple. Pop-Tone Cardstock is great for molding flowers as it’s not too thick that it won’t shape but is thin enough at 65lb that it won’t tear when shaping.

You will need a color for your card base, and color for your flowers. I have chosen Grape Jelly and Grapesicle for the mats on my card. Jelly Bean Green, Grape Jelly and Lemon Drop for my flowers. As always I am using Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 110lb for my card base.

So to start, you will need to prepare your card. I cut an A2 top folding cardbase from the Classic Crest. First mat is Grape Jelly cut 1/8th inch smaller than my base. I then emboss a floral design onto a piece of 4×5.25in Grapesicle.

This gives a delicate image to add your flowers to.

Now on to the flowers. You can use any flower dies; I love Spellbinders Susan’s Garden Dies. The one I am using is Delphinium. These flowers are tall spears of blossoms. Because I am making an A2 card I have made them shorter than the dies are. Hey it’s card designing – you can decide what goes on it!

So start your design by die cutting all your pieces. These dies call for multiple of each piece to be cut. My original plan was to have a trellis background but I couldn’t make it work but I do have the trellis cuts in my photos.

I also make another mistake and cut the calyx pieces in yellow instead of green – an easy fix is color them with an alcohol marker.

Your flowers are going shaped but to add more dimension Ink the edges with a little Distress Ink. Pop Tone Cardstock does take ink really well, I use Wilted Violet on the Grape Jelly for a tone on tone look.

Now to add your flowers to the card. Start with the stem. You need two of these. Glue them together down the center but leave the top offcuts unglued. These are going to be your buds.

Now glue your stem on to your card. Next take the calyx and using a ball tool and a foam mat, press down in to the middle of each one to give you a cup shape.

You are then going to arrange these on and around your stem for your flowers to sit in.

To build your flowers, again shape them with your ball tool and then pinch each petal so the form a V shape. Press the ball tool into the center of the petals. This flower has two petal sections – a three petal and a two petal. These need gluing together offset so you can see all five petals. There is also a stamen which is a tiny piece quilled into shape.

Once the glue has dried on your flowers you can add them to the center of each calyx.

The final part of your flower is the buds. Shape your petals in the same way and glue a three and a two petal section together. You need two of these. Pinch the outside base of these to give you a bud. Then using three petal die cuts, curl the petals up together and pinch for a smaller bud. Repeat this with the two petal ones, giving you a further smaller bud. You can see these above the card.

To add the buds to your card open the off shoots at the top of the stem, the sections you didn’t glue together. Dip the pinched section of your bud in wet glue and push into the offshoot sections. The two nearest to the flowers need to be the five petal buds, next is the three petals and finally the two petals.

The offshoots are the calyx for the buds as you can see above. Also you can add a leaf at this point. I used a tiny ball tool to add veining to the leaf and tucked it under some of the flowers.

The card needs a sentiment I chose one from Spellbinders BetterPress Always And Forever Sentiments Strips. It is pressed on to Neenah Letter Press Finish 110lb Cardstock. Just tuck this under your flowers.

The design is lop-sided so add some gems or pearls. These draw the eye to the sentiment as well as balance your design.

The gems are in a scattered position but remember to always arrange in uneven numbers. I am achieving this by adding three above and three below the sentiment.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you love making paper flowers as much as I do.