Small Vintage Rosebud Flower Tutorial

Hello and welcome to a new flower tutorial!

I am always experimenting with dies to make flowers and this flower uses just two die shapes which you will find on many die sets. I have used Eileen Hull's Stitchy Flowers and Leaf Thinlits die for the flowers in this tutorial but you will also find similar on Tim Holtz Thinlits Small Tattered Florals and many other makes.

They are a perfect size for cards and sturdy enough for the front of a book.

And the perfect size for Eileen's Tiny Box!

They can be made up with inked edges, inked all over or with plain and patterned cardstock - so very versatile and easy to get a match to your patterned papers or mixed media products.

And so for the step by step:

For each flower you will need two of a five/six petal die (larger) and two six petal die (smaller) which I have cut from standard smooth cream cardstock. As you will see further along the smaller petal die needs to have six shaped edges. Once you have the principle of how the flower is made up you can transfer it to other flower shapes.

I have used Ranger Distress Inks to colour my flowers as I love how the colours bleed when sprayed with water. You can ink the edges with a single colour .......

...... or use varying hues of a single colour ........

........ or you can combine two or three colours for a lovely mix. Just make sure you ink the front AND backs of the flowers.

I like to spritz the ink so it blends further and dries with little watery spots!

Leave to dry fully, preferably overnight.

It is always helpful if you can break the fibres of the cardstock a little. I have used a ball tool but a bone folder works just as well. I am not shaping anything just breaking the fibres.

To start building the inside of the flower work on the two smaller flower shapes. I like to use a pearl gem in the middle of the flower to help with the folding of the petals, but with practice you can manage without!

Fold up three of the petals (as shown) and add a small amount of PVA (dries clear) glue to the other three.

Then fold up the glued petals over the inner three. You get a sort of  "scrunched bud shape"!

Place this inside the other flower petal and glue down. Add three small spots of PVA glue to three of the petals ......

....... and fold and glue these around the inner bud.

Finally add glue to the remaining three petals and fold and glue around the bud shape.

You should have a lovely bud shape which can be used as a flower on its own. You will see that depending on how well you "squish" the petals you can either have an open bud or one that is more closed.

Take the two outer larger flower shapes and break down the fibres again either with a ball tool ......

....... or a bone folder (well mine is a wooden folder made by my husband).

Then using a thin pokey tool or knitting needle, roll the outside edges of the flower petal some in and some out.

Finally glue these two outer layers together and add the inner bud you made earlier.

You can either leave the flower open, or squished up .... or just make a bud by adding another layer of green petals.

I do hope this tutorial gives you some ideas for using flower dies which you may well have.

As always thank you for joining me today and happy crafting!

Jennie x