Foamiran Peony style flowers part four

Hi guys, parts 1 through 3 are on my blog previously so scroll down if you wish to see them,

On this the last tutorial for this flower display I am showing you how to make the buds and the calyx's for the base of the flowers

I again will show you one of the buds but the others are again only following the same steps just adding more petals,

Take a piece of kitchen foil roughly 7cm by 7cm square, (the cheaper foil scrunches up better,) scrunch this up into a tear/ bud shape,

When you have the shape you need, make a hole in the wider end with a wooden skewer, shown below

This hole is for a piece of wire, I bent over one end to make the wire a little thicker for the foil to hold on to,

Add some glue into the hole,

Then add the wire holding in place for a few seconds, taking your fingers you can squeeze the foil a little to help close the hole too, 

This is what your after

At this stage your ready to add your petals, so taking the smallest sized petal, start adding them around the foil,

Add some glue to one side of your foil bud,

sorry for the blurred pictures, but wrap the petal around the bud,

Add some more glue to the foil and glue the petal to the foil,

Sorry for the blurred photo's my hubby got too close to the work!!!

Anyway hopefully you can see you just keep on wrapping the petals around the foil to cover the foil up, at this stage gluing the petals close to the foil,

When the floil is covered, take the next petals and only glue at the base and half way up the bud, making sure the top of the petal is above the foil too,

Keep doing this with the next petals, nipping the tips of the petal together at the top edge, you can stop at this stage if you wish your bud to have a closed look,

The next row is again glued at the base and half way up but you can leave the tips unglued,

to give a look of the bud opening up,

 For a larger bud, keep going round with more petals, at this stage only gluing near the base,

Keep the base  nipped together,

Keep on going with as many petals for the look you wish,

Again I sometimes use a skewer to shape the petals too, 

when you have added as many petals as you wish it's time to finish off the flowers and buds with some calyx's, to make mine I cut some squares out of Olive green 0.6 foamiran, making the sizes fit in with the size of my finished flowers, to do this measure across the width of your finished flower and cut the square to that size,

Fold one of the square in half,

 Then in half again,

From the folded edge cut some ^^^^^^^^leaf shapes on one side with your scissors, going through all the layers, this is a little hard to explain but if i say the finished shape is similar to a leaf shape going to a point

Turn the foamiran over and do the same on the other side, you are left with this shape effect, 

it does get easier with practice honest!!!

Colour the edges on both sides with a little of the Crimson coloured oil pastel which I used to colour the flower petals,

Place on a medium heat iron for a couple of seconds, 

scrunch up the calyx at this point,

scrunching it between your fingers back and forth like you did with the petals,

This is what they look like at this stage,

slightly uncurl the calyx's then make a hole in the centre and add to the wire with the relevant sized flower or bud

start gluing the calyx to the base of your flower,

you can glue near the wire and slightly up the petal,

Press on it lightly to adhere,

keep going round till all the calyx petals are glued, here I added another calyx too, doing exactly the same steps, you can also at this stage scrunch the tips of the calyx again,

To finish off the flowers and buds I added some floral tape on the wires, and some hand cut leaves too, then glued them into a flower display,

This is the other side,

well I'm sorry for the blurred photo's I will try to sort that out for any in the future, soon I hope, but  I hope you could still make out the directions of what to do anyway,
Thank you all so much for your lovely comments, I will certainly try to show some more soon,
As I said before any questions just ask and please feel free to leave me any comments, I will try my best to get back to you,
Happy Crafting!!