Some of my Foamiran flowers

Hi guys, I've slightly lost my mojo, so I have played around with some of my dies and  foamiran, to make a few flowers, I love playing with this stuff as I love  flowers to look free and shabby in real life and try to make my flowers in that style too,

I have taken some step by step photo's of the way I do these flowers, 

Take your chosen flower dies, here you can see I wanted to try a few different ones out,

I usually cut about five layers of the foamiran at one time, with the die facing the foamiran of course, but I wanted to show you the dies I tried,

 As you can see these have been through my die cutter, all the dies I tried cut through cleanly with no problems,

I separated all the pieces and then taking some distress ink on a foam sponge I added some of the die to the edges of the petals on both sides,

Using a medium to slightly hot iron I placed the flower against my iron for a couple of seconds using a skewer so I didn't burn my fingers, ( you will see if shrink slightly and come away from the iron) I bought a travel iron so if the ink slightly transfers onto the iron it doesn't matter, but any iron will do you will just have to clean yours after using it, if you use your main one, Lol

As I've said I love my flowers shabby, so I don't overly worry when rolling my flowers, so I just wrap my petals together, then rub the flowers between my hands to make the foamiran thinner and more supple, leave to settle for a little while,

On this picture the tiny flowers when unwrapped were a little fiddly to work with, so  I simply shaped them with my fingers into a bud shape, ( top ones on the picture below) the other ones are what the flowers look like when I've finished rolling them,

These are the  flowers when I have opened up the petals, then using my thumbs I slightly stretch the middle of each petal outwards from the middle, be very careful doing this as it easily tears, I try not to touch the tops of the petals as I want then to look shabby, curled, bent, etc

To finish them off, I take my glue gun and layer the petals up, off setting the petal layers, depending on the size of the flowers, shape etc, I usually layer two or three layers together,

I then make a hole in the centre of the flower, adding some stamens, again I like a random effect, so I don't make them level in height or amount, 

I fix the stamens with a glob of glue at the back of the flowers,

I also at this stage still shape my flowers by cupping them in my hand if I wish them to be more closed up, as in the top middle one, above picture,

These were worked in the same way, using larger dies and different ink colours,

If you see the flower on the left it has a tear in the petal, I won't worry about this as it's going on the bottom layer so it will be hidden, ( I think these look slightly tropical, another favourite look of mine)

Well I hope you liked my small step by step, I know I haven't been able to show all the steps but it's kinda impossible as I would need three hands !!! so any questions, just ask,
Also there are loads of video on Youtube etc,

Happy Crafting!!!