Three Flowers - with Mini Tutes!

Well, it's been a busy week so far. My at-home business is just starting to pick up some speed, and on top of that I managed to have a nice, creative, crafty weekend. On Sunday, I think I went for seven hours straight, just knocking out project after project on my to-do list. I'll get pictures of all of them up eventually, but for now, I'll start with my favorite part:



Three flowers, each different in materials and construction, but alike in...flowery...ness. We'll tackle the one on the right first.



Cut slightly concentric circles from two coordinating fabrics. I traced around the bottom of a plastic cup, then cut just inside the trace line for the yellow circle, and a little further inside the trace line for the plaid circle. I did not worry about being exact, because this will all ruffle up anyway.



Fold the two circles in half together and cut a half-circle out from the middle. Again, preciseness is not necessary or relevant at this point (are you noticing a theme with my crafts yet?). Then you end up with this:



Next take some leftover lace - you really don't need much at all - and begin sewing a long running stitch along the edge of the inner circle you just cut, sort of catching the lace with your needle as you go. You can feel free to bunch up and fold the lace as much as you need to, because again, it's going to be ruffly. Ruffly is really good at hiding mistakes! I love ruffly!



Finally, get out your hot glue and use it to glue a pretty shank button into the center of the flower. Take one of the circles you cut out of the center of the flower and glue it onto the back. Finally, glue a pinback on it to give it ultimate versatility. The combination of fabrics, laces, buttons, sizes and shapes really makes this an exciting project.



Next! The easiest of the three: a book paper flower brooch.



Not so much a traditional-looking flower, but it kind of has a chrysanthemum appeal to it, I think.

Get thee several sheets ripped from books you no longer want or need. I recommend outdated tax law books, Windows 3.1 how-to manuals, or diet fad books that ended up killing more people than they saved. I used one of many Reader's Digest books I was given and can't seem to get rid of no matter how hard I try. I can't give these suckers away! So I'm making stuff with them.

Trace and cut seven circles out of the book pages, seeing if you can score big words like antidisestablishmentarianism or floccinoccihilipilification. You might not be able to find any of these words, but take a look anyway.



As the picture shows, you will begin folding them into sixths. So basically take a circle, fold it in half, then fold that in half, then fold it in half again. Crease firmly so they keep their folded shape. Do this to 6 circles (leave one circle unfolded - this will be your base).

Glue those suckers onto the base radially, as in, glue them so that their points are in the center of the base and it looks like you have little folded paper spokes all the way around it. Unfold the not-glued-down parts of your petals, and fluff! Glue a pinback to the back of the base. (I LOVE PINBACKS.)

Finally, the largest and possibly weirdest one: the toilet paper roll flower.

Get yourself an empty toilet paper roll and press the sides together until it's folded in half. Using very sharp scissors, cut six (or more, depending on how full you want your flower to be) slices, roughly 1/2-inch wide, off one end. Because of the fold you created in the tube, your slices will already be roughly petal-shaped.

Arrange them together and glue so that they look like a flower, like so:



I was lucky that my toilet paper rolls were a nice, not-unattractive shade of white. If yours are brown and you don't want them to be, I would recommend doing some painting at this point.

Next, glue the whole shebang to the right side of some pretty fabric (I used my yellow again). Now, I went to the great and tremendous trouble of hot-gluing along the edges of the petals and placing them carefully, one at a time, on the fabric, lamenting every spill, burn, and leak in the process. DO NOT DO THIS. It wasn't until I was done with the hot-gluing that I realized that spray adhesive would have worked MUCH BETTER. So use that instead.



You may also want to iron your fabric. Or not.

Then, carefully cut away the excess fabric around the flower, leaving only what's glued to the petals, so you have something that looks like this:



Again, it's okay if you're not really precise with your cutting, but try to get as close as you can without losing your eyesight or making your fingers cramp.

At this point, I needed a way to sort of clean up my edges a little, so I threaded an embroidery needle with some pretty pink embroidery thread and just looped it around the cardboard petals, which not only hid some of my hot glue mess, but also provided a little extra strength between the cardboard and the fabric.

Finally, I took another tiny scrap of lace and ruffled it up using the same flower-ruffling method from the first tutorial. I glued it and another fabric scrap to the front and - you guessed it - a pinback to the back. This one is considerably larger than the other two, so I would recommend it as an embellishment for a winter coat or a large bag. It's a bit too much for daily wear. But hey, it's a way to use up toilet paper rolls! If you, you know...have a need to use up toilet paper rolls. Like...I do.



Anyway, there you are! Three handmade flowers you might not have thought to make before but might try now! If you do try, I hope you'll post pictures or at least link me to your blog or Flickr stream so I can see it! Hope everyone's having a great week!

This post has been linked to the following link par-tays:

A Thrifty Home's Penny Pinching Party


Me and My Bucket’s Show Us What You’re Workin’ With Wednesday


Someday Crafts’ Whatever Goes Wednesday


The Trendy Treehouse Creative Share Blog Hop


Women Who Do It All Idea Sharin’ Wednesday


Blue Cricket Design Show and Tell


My Backyard Eden’s Make It Yours Wednesday


Sew Much Ado’s We Did It Wednesday


733 Blog’s Sugar and Spice Weekly Link Party


Fine Craft Guild’s DIY Linky Party