Handmade Flowers – Mum & Dad

Week 11 of my 13 class. If I didn’t know I was moving straight onto May Flaum’s summer camp class I’d be sad to think it was coming to an end but I know I’ll be busy the whole of July with the scrapbooking camp May is running.

I’ve made flowers and more flowers and even more flowers this week. At one point my hands were a multitude of colors from the glimmer misting and hand work involved. One important thing I’ve learnt is you can work chipboard really well when its wet to form different shapes. It dries really nicely keeping the form you created so instead of a flat flower you have one with some dimension – just spray it with some water or glimmer mist. Another thing I learnt which I’d never though of doing is running my chipboard through my cuttlebug in one of the embossing folders to give some texture. Really great way of adding interest. Why didn’t I think of that before!!

In the end I didn’t use many of my flowers on the layout assignment for the week because you ask? Well as Nic Howard said less is sometimes more and three just seemed enough and I didn’t need any color. The final layout is very similar to the one in the handout. Nic provides very precise instructions but usually mine ends up very different. Yes the papers and things I used are different but the basic design is very similar.
The frame around the picture is made using grunge board again. Its meant to have beautiful mitered corners but that didn’t work out very well for me and there were gaps so I added extra square blocks on top to hide my mistakes! Next time I think I’d paint it cream rather than the blue. I chose blue to pick out the color on the layout but I think in the end the blue of the frame sort of dominates the picture. Once done its done and I’m not changing it!
On this layout I even broke out the old foam stamps with my paint and stamped the swirls – golly haven’t done that in a while! Had to dust off the box and dig out from under the pile of other stuff – think I’ll do it again soon as it does look cool.
I should really be talking about the flowers – the large one is made of parchment paper. I punched five scalloped circles, inked the edges, put a brad through the center and crumbled each circle up individually. You then open the circles out to form the flower. Quick and simple. I’ve done this with patterned paper as well. The two smaller ones are just 3 circles of patterned paper in 3 graduating sizes, Edges inked and a brad through the center. I then wetted the layers prior to crumbling them up to soften the edges and make them easier to form into shapes. 
Check out a previous blog for some links on making flowers or go to utube and search handmade paper flowers and you will have full night of movies to watch!