Foamiran Peony style flower tutorial, part three - making up the flowers

Hi guys, this is the 3rd tutorial on my Peony styled flowers, part one and two are in my last two previous posts, if you wish to scroll down and see them first,

These flowers are all made the same way, the only difference is how many layers of petals I have added to each flower, the more petals the larger the finished flower,

I will be giving the tutorial for one of the flowers

Take a piece of wire, mine is some from my hubbies stash but any suitable wire will do and of course you can buy some for flower making too,

at one end of the wire bend it over with some pliers, if your wires thin enough you can also do this by hand, if at this stage you wish your flowers to stand up though, make sure it is thick enough to do so,

Take some stamens double ended stamens

and fold them in half so both ends meet together,

Take some sewing thread and wrap around the bent middle of the stamens a few times, as shown below, do not cut off  the  thread at this point,

Then take some hot glue and attach the wire to the stamens, you may be able to hook the bent over end of the wire into the wrapped thread, but if not just glue the wire onto the top of the thread,

Wrap some more thread around the wire to help hold in in place,

At this point add some more hot glue,

To start your flower add some glue onto your stamens as shown below,

Take a  small petal and add it to the glue,

At this point nip the petal at the bottom to help give the shape and to make sure the glue adheres to the petal,

Shown below is the look you want, the top of the petal is just slightly above the stamens,

Add some glue at the sides of the petal to keep it held,

then add another bit of glue on the outer bottom edge, 

Add the next petal, slightly overlapping the petal over the last petal edge,

Again keep the petals close to the stamens,

Do the same step for the next petal, this closes the stamens in petals,

If I have added too much glue I sometimes use a wooden skewer to press the petal on so I don't burn my fingers,

This is the look your after,

Add the next layer, doing the same steps, here I would add the next layer gluing the base in between the petals already added, add  another two or three layers of petals,

 For a small flower  head, keep to the smaller petals, but at this stage you can start adding the larger sized up petals too,

 So I then went to the next sized petals,

This is the effect you get, for the medium sized flower I left it at this amount of petals,

At this point it's ready for a Calyx at the bottom, more on that later,

To make a larger flower you do the same steps as above but keep on adding the petals, doing the same moves just adding some more of the largest  petals too,

I think this is enough for today, tomorrow I will show you how to make buds and how to make the Calyx too,
Leave me some comments to let me know you've visited and if you have any questions, please ask,
Happy Crafting!!!

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!!