25.3.14

Handmade Flower Bouquet Tutorial

Handmade Flowers 1
Handmade Flower Bouquet
My mother loves flowers and I made this bouquet of handmade flowers for her 67th birthday which we celebrated just a few days back.Red is her favourite colour and I used 2 shades of red punch-craft paper to make this handmade floral bouquet.
Handmade Flowers 2
Porcelain Heart
The flower vase is a crystal glass filled with pearly white marbles and dressed up with a garland of pearls.The porcelain-like heart on the tag is handmade [Here is the tutorial: Embellishment tutorial ].

Handmade flower bouquet tutorial

Handmade Flowers 3
Paper flower tutorial 

Materials Required to make the Paper Flowers

Paper – Chart paper or thin punch-craft paper is easiest to shape and layer to make the paper daisy flower in this tutorial .If you use cardstock you will have to spend more energy embossing the petals!
Paper Flowers- Die cut, punch or hand cut paper flowers . I used the Sizzix Bigz Tim Holtz Tattered flowers die and die cut 4 flowers at a time from thin punch-craft paper. I find this a big advantage while using BigZ dies compared to thin dies.Use 3 - 6 cut flowers to make a single paper flower.
Embossing tools – Use any rounded end  object you have – eg rounded end of a pen , clay modelling tool, parchment craft embossing tool, rounded end of a quilling tool or a proper punchcraft embossing tool.
Embossing Pad or Mouse pad –to shape the petals.
Flower Center Suggestions- Pearls, Glitter, Seed Beads,Quilled fringed flower,crepe paper ball or even a  pompom like I have used in this paper flower
Adhesive- White PVA glue [Fevicol MR is my favourite] to stick the flowers and a glue gun to stick the pompom.

Paper Flower tutorial

Handmade Flowers 4
Paper flower tutorial
Place the flower on the mouse pad/ embossing pad and run the embossing tool from the tip of the flower petal to the base of the petal.If you emboss your petal from the outside to the inside it tends to curl the maximum!Different diameters of embossing tools will give a slightly different look to your embossed paper flower so do experiment to get the look you love the most!
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Paper flower tutorial
Invert this cup type flower on the embossing pad and now emboss the center of the flower alone with a circular movement of your embossing tool to get a good cup shaped center.
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Paper flower tutorial
Apply glue only to the center of the flower and stick at least 3 flowers in a staggering manner. Some of the handmade flowers in my bouquet have up to 6 layers of paper flowers
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Handmade Paper Flowers
I experimented using different objects for the flower centers and found I loved the unique look of the sparkly black pompoms! If you have enough patience you can use regular white glue to stick the pompoms otherwise use the glue gun!!

How to make a handmade flowers bouquet

The paper flowers shown above were so easy to make that in no time I had a whole bunch to assemble into a handmade floral bouquet.To make the flower bouquet you can use
Flower tutorial  1
Handmade flower tutorial 
  1. Stems – options are
    • Metal wires- thicker gauge is preferred so that they can take the weight of your flowers.
    • Wooden skewers like I used in the thermocol rose tutorial .
    • Readymade stem with branches like in the foam rose tutorial .
  2. Floral tape 
  3. Flower calyx
    • If your handmade flower has a flat base like my daisy here you need to make a calyx so that your flower sits prettily on your floral stem.I used 5 mm quilling strips and a slotted quilling tool to make the conical calyx for my paper daisy.
    • If your handmade flower has a pointed base like in my handmade  foam roses  you can insert the stem into the flower base and wrap a cut flower or star shape around it as a calyx.
  4. Leaves – make your own wired leaves like in this Cala lily tutorial  or use ready-made paper or fabric leaves. I have used veined velvet leaves here.

How to make the Flower Calyx

Since many of my blog readers are not into quilling explaining the steps to make a quilled flower calyx.
Flower tutorial  2
Flower Calyx tutorial 
You can use 3 mm , 5mm or even 1cm width paper strips to make your flower calyx. I used a paper strip nearly 17 inches long [formed by gluing 2 quilling strips end to end].
Insert the end of the paper into a slotted quilling tool.[If you dont have one you can simply try rolling the paper strip around the wooden or metal wire you are going to use as your floral stem].Roll the quilling tool and use your fingers to help form the paper coil.
Flower tutorial  3
Flower tutorial 
Apply glue on the end of the paper strip,stick and complete your paper disc.
Flower tutorial  4
Handmade Flower tutorial 
Use a rounded object [I used the other end of my quilling tool] to shape your quilled paper disc into a bell shaped calyx.Just press in your rounded object into the paper disc in a circular movement going inwards from the periphery and you will form a cup shaped paper shape. This is a bit tricky if you are not used to it as you may get tents,volcanoes and mini monster shapes instead of bells and cups!It doesnt really have to be perfect!
Flower tutorial  5
Handmade flower tutorial 
Once you have a fairly decent conical shape insert your metal or wooden skewer into it as shown and push the paper cone right to the tip of your metal/wooden stick.Apply PVA glue or hot glue into the cup and stick your paper flower on it.Apply a bit of glue on your floral tape [always better unless your floral tape is nice and sticky] and wrap around your quilled paper calyx and down the wood/metal stem of your paper flower.
You can keep adding the wired leaves as you wrap the floral tape or add them later.
Handmade Flowers 7
Handmade Flower Bouquet
I didnt have the right flower vase for my handmade paper floral bouquet so made one using a crystal glass [whose siblings had all broken!!] and pearly white marbles.
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Handmade Flower Bouquet
The sparkling pompoms,the shiny marbles ,the white pearls and the porcelain heart makes my flower bouquet shimmer in the light.
I hope you like this simple handmade flower tutorial .Do tell me how you like it.
Here is the link to more Handmade flower tutorials

18.3.14

How to make a Weighing Balance

Dear friends by now you must be used to occasional weird titled posts from me like “ How to make a Tooth model !!” Well you  guessed right its another school project.
Weighing Balance 1
Weighing balance

               Now my 7 year old [ in 2nd Standard] and is learning about measurements in Maths and had to make a homemade weighing balance.I was sorely tempted to let hubby take over this one as I felt quite challenged but it was so much easier than I thought as my kiddo herself gave me the ideas!!
Weighing Balance 4
Weighing balance
           My kiddo’s school is big on recycling and so we always  try to incorporate recycling into our school projects.We recycled some plastic containers into our “scales”.We punched holes on the plastic containers using  the cropadile big bite and to make the holes nice and strong I set eyelets into the punched holes
Weighing Balance 5
Weighing Balance
              We tied strong kite thread  to holes in the containers and tied it to the ends of the cloth hanger .I found that the easiest way to get the lengths of the scales the same was to adjust the lengths and then tape the threads at the hanger ends.
Weighing Balance 6
Weighing Balance
             We dressed up our weighing balance with ribbon and pattern paper and I even added a glittery foam bow + lots of pink and purple foam flowers.
Weighing Balance 7
Weighing Balance
                These days I tend to use foam more and more for school projects as foam can take a lot of”poking” and “exploring” by little hands and believe me my little one’s friends are experts at that !!
Weighing Balance 2
Weighing Balance
              Sticking paper to plastic is always a challenge and I used double sided tissue tape to stick the pattern paper to the outside of our plastic container scales and just rolled up a pattern paper and inserted it inside the containers as a pretty lining for our home made weighing balance.
Weighing Balance 3
Weighing Balance
And here is my little girl proudly displaying her  utterly girlie homemade weighing balance
Do tell me how you liked our girly weighing balance.

13.3.14

Double Twisted Easel Card

Twisted Easel Card 1
Double Twisted Easel Card
Dear friends many of you often ask me if I ever make simple cards as I have a deep love for Interactive and pop up cards!! Well sharing a simple fancy fold card .
Twisted Easel Card 2
Double Twisted Easel Card
I die cut musical signs on silver glitter foam and stuck it on a star embossed white scallop square to make a Double Twisted Easel card
Twisted Easel Card 3
Double Twisted Easel Card
I love how simple it is to make this type of easel card .Thank you Tanvi for reminding me of my own tutorial !! [see tutorial link : Double twisted Easel card tutorial ]and it folds flat to mail!
Supplies : All from Itsy Bitsy:Bigshot, Dies : Spellbinder lacy heart,scallop lacy borders.Cuttlebug Musical sign.Sizzix embosslit rose,Couture creations scalloped squares.Itsy Bitsy Stars embossing folder.Itsy Bitsy Pigment Inkpads.Distress Ink pads Peeled Paint,worn lipstick

7.3.14

Twist up Pop Up card

Pop up cards 7
Twist up Pop up card
Dear friends Thank you for sticking by me and giving such amazing support to my post on Stamping Basics. You are the best !! I made this special triple pop up mechanism birthday card for my niece in Kerala.
Pop up cards 1
Interactive 3 D card
Pop up cards are ideal for posting as classically the front of these cards are relatively un-embellished . I used my new poppystamps die to make an Interactive Card!
Pop up cards 3
Interactive 3 D card
The arches are Spellbinder die cuts glued only at the ends to make a 3 D arch.
Pop up cards 5
Glitter foam Tiara
I cut the little girl's crown from glitter foam and this earned me a big "WOW a Princess!!" from my own little Princess!!
Pop up cards 4
Interactive 3 D card
The lattice windows swing open to reveal a princess standing on a royal silver glittery carpet!I secured the windows closed with a bit of pink satin ribbon which you may have noticed in the earlier picture.On opening the card the little Princess sitting on a strawberry  swings up at the center of the card with Pop Up Strawberry plants on either side and floating clouds atop.
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Pop up card

Now a bit of Pop Up Card making jargon to pique your interest!The 3 D pop up scene has 3 types of Pop Up mechanisms.Most pop up cards in which the image spans the central card fold tend to have folds in the middle of the image[eg Pop Up Christmas Card].You can shift the image from the center of the card fold like I did in this Fairy Home Pop Up Card or use the V fold as part of your Pop up like in the Wishing Well Pop Up card.
Pop up cards 10
Floating cloud Pop up
The Clouds are made by a floating pop up mechanism like in this tutorial : Christmas Wreath Pop up card tutorial .The little girl springs up in the center of the Pop up card by a twisting up Pop Up mechanism. And the 3rd pop up mechanism is a super easy accordion fold pop up [tutorial link :Pop Up Card tutorial ]which makes the strawberry plant and strawberry pop up on either side of the little girl in this triple action Pop Up Card
Pop up cards 6
Pop up card
I am trying to get over my dislike of videos and made my first Video!! Tried making the Pop Up Card Video on You tube but was not happy with the quality [Does anyone have any tips on software or editing tools to make better You tube videos?]so sharing a short 36 sec video on Vimeo.

            I usually share tutorials [see more than 135 tutorials on Craft tutorials page] on most crafts I blog about but the twist up pop up card is a difficult one !!Yet if I get enough requests I will gladly tackle the task of making and posting a tutorial !! [I am guessing 2 pop up card enthusiasts Pooja and Sindhu....??!]
Do tell me how you like this interactive card.
PS : I have been missing from blogland...will soon drop by and visit you all!