Spiral Flower Tutorial

Good evening fellow bloggers! Today I'm going to take a few minutes to post a quick tutorial on how to make spiral flowers. I recently learned how to do this in a class I took at my local scrapbook store. During this class I made my very first canvas! I'll be posting this soon because I'm very proud of how it came out! These spiral flowers were part of the canvas. They're so very simple to make but yet make such a great statement on layouts, canvases, cards etc...In addition, I found that making these flowers is an excellent way to get rid of scraps!

So let's get started.

First your supplies...you'll need scraps of patterned paper in various square sizes. I've cut scraps into 2 1/2" inches x 2 1/2" inches & 4" inches x 4" inches for this tutorial. The bigger the square, the bigger the flower will be. Next you'll need scissors & some glue dots. The rest of the supplies (pencil, glimmer mist & chalk ink) are optional. These extra supplies are simply to add more pizzazz to your spiral flowers if desired. I'll be using all of these for this tutorial.

This step is optional. Spray your paper with glimmer mist. You're not looking for perfection here--so just spritz away! I ended up using some Smooch as well on the yellow patterned cardstock.

Once the paper has dried--cut out circles from the square pieces of carstock. Once again, you're looking for imperfect circles--so don't worry if your circles come out a little lopsided--lopsided circles give the sprial flowers more personality. Here you can also use a pencil to hand draw your circle if you prefer & then proceed to cut out.

Starting from the outside of the circle start cutting in a spiral fashion all around the circle until you get to the center. Do not cut the center of the spiral out--you'll be needing this later in order to glue the flower together. Also, try not to cut the spiral too thin. I learned this the hard way! When you cut the spiral too thin you end up with a very tight coil when you start twirling the flower & then it takes extra work to loosen it.

In the end, this is what you should have. Notice that I did not cut the center of the flower out.

This step is optional. If you want to define your spiral flower some more--ink it's edges with the chalk ink as shown here.

Before beginning to twirl your flower make sure that the pattern you want to be the face of the flower is facing you. With a pair of tweezers take the outer tail of the spiral flower & begin rolling it towards you. This part is the only one that takes a bit of practice because you need to keep your thumb placed at the bottom of the spiral flower so it doesn't spring out of your grasp. Also, try not to coil it too tight or you'll end up with a very tight sprial--& then you'll have to work to un-coil it!

Here's a screen shot of the flower after I've coiled it completely. I also wanted to show how I positioned my thumb in order to keep the flower from uncoiling itself. It helps though that I have very flexible thumbs as you can see here! My mom always makes fun of my twisty thumbs!

Once you have coiled the flower completely, remove the tweezers.

This is what you'll end up with. As you can see, I still have issues with how tight I coil my flowers! They look awfully tight don't they!? :-) No worries though...you just need to take extra steps to loosen the flower up a bit.

First trick is to turn the flowers upside down & then press down on the flowers with the palm of your hand. Don't be afraid to mash them--coiled flowers don't mash--they just loosen up a bit when you do this. If your flowers are still too coiled after this step then go onto the next step...

This step is simply to un-coil the flowers a bit in order to loosen them up. You do this by twirling the flowers in the opposite direction--which would be away from you. Do this with both hands & use mostly your thumbs to uncoil the flower.

Uncoil the flower to your liking. Once you're satisfied with the flower it's time to glue them in place. Take your glue dots & place them at the bottom of the coil which would be the center of your flower as shown in the screen shot. Once the glue dot is in place adhere the center of the flower to the glue dot. No need to glue the outside layers of the flower--all you really need to adhere is the center of the flower--once the center is adhered the rest of the flower will stay in place.

Here you go--two spiral flowers in two different sizes.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I'll be posting my very first canvas soon!

:-)

Till my next post...

Shaker Box Tutorial

Ok, here's that second tutorial I mentioned in a previous post. Once again, I'm doing this my way. I'm sure there are many more other tutorials out there on shaker boxes--this will simply add to that list! This is very similar to the way I made the giant shaker box that I used to frame my picture in the 'My 2 Loves' layout. However, in the 'My 2 Loves' layout I used a transparency for the background of the shaker box as well as for the cover. I needed both the front & back of the shaker box to be transparent so that the picture would show through. In this tutorial, I use a solid background.

So let's get started! Here's a basic list of supplies. Paper of your choice, two-sided sticky tape, scissors, craft knife, 2-sided sticky foam (I have foam strips that I cut into the desired pieces), beads, buttons or sequins or anything else to throw into your shaker box. You can't really see it in the picture but I do have a transparency. If you don't have a transparency, clear report covers & acetate work too. The rubber stamp is optional, I'll be using a rubber stamp to decorate the background of the shaker box. I'll also improvise as I go--so if you see me using a supply that wasn't on my original list, you'll know why! I'm also using a heart template for the shaker box. Most shaker boxes tend to be square or rectangle--however, I'm going with a different shape--a heart--so it always helps to have a template as a guide when making a shaker box that is not a square or rectangle.

Let's start with the top cover of the shaker box. I flipped my plaid cardstock over and traced the heart template on it. I traced bothe the inside & outside of the heart template. I then used my scissors to cut the heart out.

With my craft knife I then cut the inside of the heart out. When done I ended up with a heart frame. The heart itself I will keep for a future project.

I put my heart frame aside & took my heart template again & this time traced it onto my transparency. For this step you only need to trace the outside of the heart. I then cut the heart out with my scissors.

Here I improvised a little. I decided to ink the edges of my heart template to define the edges more. So I inked it with brown chalk ink.

I flipped my heart frame over & then cut strips of two sided stick tape & stuck them all around the edge of the heart frame. I then removed the labels from my sticky tape & carefully adhered the heart transparency onto my heart frame.

You can't really see it here--but I've adhered the clear heart to the heart frame & now we have the cover to the shaker box complete!

I put the shaker box cover aside & grabbed my heart template again. I traced the heart onto the cardstock that I'm going to use for the background of my shaker box. I then randomly stamped my sentiment all over with yellow, brown & blue ink.

I then cut out my background.

I took the front cover & turned it around. I started adhering the 2-sided foam tape all around the back edges of the front cover. As you can see from this screen shot--you need to make sure that each foam strip completely touches the next foam strip. You want to make sure that there are no gaps in between the strips. Any gaps may cause whatever you put inside the shaker box to come out. I use tiny beads a lot in my shaker boxes so I need to make extra sure that there are no gaps.

Here's a screen shot after adhering the 2-sided foam tape all around the heart frame. Mine didn't come out very neat because I'm using a template with lots of curves. However, if making a straight forward square or rectangle shaker box you usually end up with a very neat border. Either way, in the end it won't matter since you'll be adhering the back cover to the front cover & in turn hiding any uneven foam tape.

Next step is to remove the backing of the 2-sided foam tape & adhere your background. I remove the backing from the foam tape all around except for one corner. This corner is where I'll be pouring in my beads, buttons, sequins or whatever it is that I'll be using inside my shaker box.

Here's a shot of what the shaker box looks like so far. Next it's time to pour into the shaker box the items that will give this box it's name! I'll be using buttons & tiny beads for mine.

Here's a look as to what the border of the shaker box looks like. As you can see, the foam tape created a sort of 'wall' that will keep whatever you put inside your shaker box from falling out.

Go to the corner that you left unadhered & start pouring in your beads, buttons etc...

Remove the backing from the remaining foam strips & completely seal your shaker box--and you're done!

Here's the shaker box living up to it's name--I just shook it & had all the beads inside go everywhere!

Hope you all found this tutorial useful & that you start incorporating shaker boxes to your layouts.

Till my next post...