Cabbage Rose Tutorial

As promised yesterday I am back to share a tutorial for the blowsy cabbage rose flowers I used to decorate my French wallet and tag yesterday.

You need to use a reasonable quality paper stock as it is going to have a lot of water sprayed on it. I used papers from the Tim Holtz Shabby Chic Paper Stack.  

Using the Tattered Florals Die, cut four each of the largest flower and four of the second smallest flower (the two flowers on the left hand side).

Gather them together with a brad and layer them so the petals are not lying on top of each other but staggered.  I also used different sides of the paper to add extra interest.

Spray the whole stack with water and then scrunch up the very first flower.  Spray again and scrunch up the next flower.  

Keep repeating this until all the layers have been spritzed and scrunched.

Now this is where I would normally leave it to dry, but instead while it is still very wet, start peeling back one of the flower layers and mould each petal around a knitting needle or a thin paintbrush.  You need to work quite carefully as the paper is very sodden, and don't try to ease out the petals, just mould in all the creases and scrunches.

Continue to mould the four large layers and then leave the inner layers to dry scrunched up. I left my flower to dry overnight but you could blitz it with a heat gun to speed it up a little.

For the smaller flower I did just the same thing, but used four cut layers of the second smallest flower and four cut layers of the smallest flower on the Tattered Florals Die.

I also made this flower using the spiked flowers from the die, but the leaves were a little thin to take so much water and kept falling off! However, it does give a slightly different look.

I do hope you have a go at making some of these flowers and do let me know how you get on.

Thank you for visiting today.

Jennie x