Glass Flower Tutorial

Hello once again fellow scrappers. Today's brief tutorial is one I've been meaning to post for a long time--let's just say I finally found the time to do so! Experimenting with transparencies is something I really like to do. These flowers were inspired by Irene Tan (Scrapperlicious). She loves to experiment with acrylic & transparencies & she's made a couple of transparent flowers that really add a fabulous touch to her pages--this is my take on these see-through flowers. This particular flower that I'm demonstrating can be seen in my 'Love' page.

You'll need the following supplies: Flower punch and/or flower die cut--I'm using a combination of the medium sized Retro Flower punch by EK Success & the Tattered Flowers die by Tim Holtz--white gel pen, Sharpie Paint marker, transparency or acrylic, decorative scissors.

Step 1: Punch or cut out your flowers. For this flower I used 1 large & 1 small flower from the Tattered Florals die & 2 punched Retro flowers.

Step 2: With your Sharpie Oil Based Paint marker color in the edges of your transparent flowers. You can find these markers at your local Michaels & most office stores have them. If all fails you can always find them online. I've linked to the Amazon page for this example.

Step 3: Take your white gel pen & draw small white dots all along the black border you gave your transparent flowers.

Step 4: This step is optional. With decorative scissors I snip the edges of the retro flowers in order to give them more dimension.

Step 5: Ink the edges of your retro flowers.

Step 6: Bend & fold all the petals upwards on all your flowers as shown in the picture.

Step 7: Curl the tips of the retro flowers downwards with a pencil or thin handle of a brush. I'm using the handle of a thin paint brush here.

Step 8: Pierce a hole in the center of all your flowers & stack them together. You can either glue the layers together or use a brad like I did to hold your flower together. Buttons, pearls, mulberry flowers--anything is an acceptable center for these flowers!

You can also make completely transparent flowers as seen in this picture. These were made with the large, medium & small retro flower punches. I used the same technique as above. I punched the flowers out on transparencies...inked the edges with a Sharpie Paint marker, added the white dots with my white gel pen, stacked the layers & then simply added a small white mulberry rose in the center. These particular flowers I used in my 'Out There' page. Since these Sharpie markers come in all sorts of colors, you can make glass flowers in a variety of colors--you don't have to stick to your basic black & white.

If you want a flower that's still see through but with a bit more color...simply add some alcohol ink & you can even stamp on it as show in this picture. You can find this flower on my 'New York' page. For this flower I alcohol inked it with Butterscotch & a touch of Bronze--then I stamped on it with StazOn. Completely different look but still see through!

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

Till my next post...