What to do with left over flowers?

Blogging again eh, see what you can achieve when you aren't at work!

So after I'd made tons of flowers for my gorgeous pomegranate canvas and tag artwork the other week, I had some leftover cut out flowers that were just lying there taunting me to make something with them.  One of my all time favourite flowers are cone flowers where the petals droop down like tattered ballerina skirts.  I'd also had an idea wafting around in my brain to make a bouquet of flowers using florists wire for the stems.

Decision made.

I took the large petal shape and with a large paper stump rubbed them in the centre on the back to make the petals rise up (or down when you turned it over).  With the other petal shapes I did the reverse so they would rise up!

Next using a glue gun (I love using my glue gun it gives such height to your work when trying to create a 3D look) I stuck them all together carefully so as not to flatten them, added a Craftworks candy fake brad as a centre. One they were dry I sprayed some tattered rose and copper glimmer mist over the top just to give a subtle shimmer.

Stems - I was originally going to cover the wire in strips of torn calico but then thought - would tissue tape work here?  And oh yes it did!  So wound tissue tape around each of the stems.  At the top using my round nose pliers I bent over say an inch and the curl it round to make a spiral that I could attach the flower too.  Using a bit of cut an' dry I ran the stems through some peeled paint DI to add a bit of colour.

Attaching - again using the glue gun I put quite a blob of glue on the reverse of the flower and cupping the lower petals in one hand I carefully put the spiral end of the stem in the glue and slightly wiggled it to make sure it was embedded in the glue.  Held it for a bit until the glue got more solid and left the flower to set completely.

Now what to put them in? Fortunately for me we have a branch of that well know craft superstore just 10 minutes away from us. (My husband would say unfortunately but hey I don't complain when more fish and bird seed arrive from his favourite stores). So I trundled down there as I knew they got various paper mache containers that would do the trick.  Bought a circular box and the bag as I wasn't sure but in the end plumped with the bag.

I gessoed the box first and then  covered it in torn page's of text.  Next some colour.  I went with some thin washes of a vibrant pink mixed with some white to take it down a notch, then some dry brushing of the "neat" colour and finally some thin washes of  a denim blue and some dry brushed white. Now to add some stamping of text and flowers in stormy sky DI, you can hardly see it but I know it's there!  Added some wooden baubles as feet, re-threaded the handle and glued on the final three flowers.

For the flowers to sit in I cut some dry oasis to sit in the bag and covered that with some coconut fibre, I bent over the flower heads slightly and then carefully pushed the stems into the oasis staggering the height of each flower.

Pretty pleased with the result, really like the feet as they just raise it up and the flowers were exactly how I imagined them, you can just see in the photo above of the flower at the back how the petals droop down.

So it's Easter Sunday and it's clouded over a bit today just in time for the BBQ we have planned for family, but my biggest dilemma is whether to do more paper based crafting or work with some fabric? 

Now where's my sewing machine....

jo
xx