Easy Flower Tutorial (Prima, single layer flowers)

Let's Talk Flowers

Do you have lots of those paper flowers that came out several years ago? Paper crafters purchased them in darling display bottles to adorn their craft rooms. My friend Terry recently cleaned out her craft room and brought a box full of these Prima flowers to my house, knowing I'm a flower fiend.

What to do with all these flowers? Especially if the petals are all the same size? It needs to be something easy because of my fumble fingers. There has to be an easy way of using these flowers in a manner useful for "today's style" of crafting, right?

Get creative - there really are a lot of uses for them, and I'll show more in upcoming posts since the flowers are rather prolific at my house right now.

Let's make inexpensive dimensional flowers that can be added to scrapbook pages, cards, frames, papier mache, and other projects, using what is already in your stash. To make it REALLY simple, how about all those tiny brads -- I know they lurk in your craft room if you've been papercrafting for any length of time.

Make it easy peasy, or use inks, glitters, prills, embossing powders, sprays, etc. Mine are easy peasy.

Step 1 - select 3 flowers. Turn the middle layer upside down from the other two layers. Insert the tiny brad through the middle.

Step 2 - Hold the prongs of the brad. With your other hand, apply the Quick Dry Glue (available at any big box store).

Step 3 - begin pushing the layers together. Put a little glue between the 2nd and 3rd layer if desired and squish those together until the shape is pleasing. Let set about 1-2 minutes until dry.

Apply paint, sprays or glitter if desired.

If you enjoy "flower arranging" on your card, add one step by using florist wire. This will enable you to place the finished blossom at angles on your card.

Use pliable florist wire.

Wrap it around the brad.

Straighten the wire to go in the same direction as the brad prong.

Thread the flower so that the middle layer faces the opposite direction of the first and third layers.

Thread the flower layers through the wire.

Another advantage of the wire is that the prongs can be flattened against the flower during the gluing process.

Apply the Glue

Scrunch the petals to achieve your look. It may be preferable to put glue between the 2nd and 3rd layers, too, depending on the look desired.

The glue will dry clear.

Make several at one time so they can be ready for use. Use single layers of flowers and scrunch them up with glue to create tiny buds. Use two layers (each facing different directions), and glue them together to create smaller, partially opened flowers. 

Have fun using your stash!

hugs,