Peony styled flower tutorial - Part two

Hi guys, If your seeing this and you missed my first part yesterday you may want to watch that first, it basically showed the petal dies I used and how I coloured them,

if you have already watched that then grab a cuppa and we will begin part two!! lol

So here are my coloured petals, ready to be made up to form a Peony type flower,

also shown are some stamens for the center of my flower, any ones in your stash will do,( some wire and an iron on a medium heat setting, no steam),sorry not shown, I get my wire off my hubby but you can buy wire especially for flower making, a foam pad of some description, mine is a washing up pad with a dry wet wipe wrapped around it, some wire cutters, cotton thread, a ball tool  2  light bulbs , sorry one not shown!! but more on that later, 

Take your smallest sized petal and hold it against the iron for a few seconds, I find a wooden skewer helps a lot here, saves burnt fingers!!

then place it on top of your foam pad, and press down with your ball tool,

It will look similar to this when you have done the above step,

Holding the petal in your hand and keeping the bottom edge of your petal held between your thumb and finger as shown, scrunch the top end together and twist backwards and forwards a few times, slightly pulling up as you twist, not hard though, easing it!!

This is the look your after,

Take the petal and start slightly stretching and gently easing it in the middle part of the flower with your fingers,

Coax the petal rather then pulling it as doing it too hard can tear the foamiran,

Slightly cup the petal too, as shown below, do this for all the smaller petals,

Here is a few of the petals shaped and ready to be used,

You do the same process for the next sized petals but this time I used a bulb for a car headlamp, again off hubby, I used this because I didn't have a big enough ball tool at the time but you can buy them if you wish, 

Here is the bulb I used, if you do use one similar take extra care because of course they are made out of glass,

So I did the same heating my petal on the iron then palcing it on my foam pad pressing it down with the bulb,

Then again do the scrunching, stretching and shaping of the petals, as before,

For the largest petals, I did exactly the same steps but I used a large bulb to press my petals onto the foam pad,

As you can see this isn't quite as shaped but it does help to scrunch up the petals as before,

Tomorrow I will do another tutorial on how to put the flower together,
Again if you have any questions just ask,

Happy Crafting!!