Handmade Flowers/display

I don't have a card for you today, but these flowers could easily be used on a card. I am making these in abundance along with many other types of flowers for a display on the book The Secret Garden. This happened to be one of my favourite reads when I was a child and still have fond memories of it. So I was  delighted when I was asked to do a display on the book.  I don't get enough time at work to create enough elements for this display so I have been spending many hours making flowers at home in the evenings and at weekends just to make sure I have enough flowers for the board. This has meant I haven't had too much time for card making this last week or so. Hence the lack of posts on my blog. I guess I could have made life easier for myself and create a baron  garden, devoid of colour, but where's the fun in that.

 Today I will share with you how I made these flowers.

 I punched out a bunch of petals using an old S.U punch (the name escapes me)

 from some pale orange card, I sponged a little pumpkin pie ink over the tips of the petals. Then using my Japanese screw punch, I punched a small hole in the centre of each flower.

Then I cut a strip of yellow card an inch and a half wide by the length of a piece of A4 card stock and drew a line along one long edge with a black marker pen and rule. I folded the strip in half and snipped into the black edge many times and very close together and about 3/4 of an inch deep to create a fringe.

 To make the centre of the flower I snipped off  about and inch and a half of the fringe and rolled it up tightly and glued the end.

                                      I stamped a few brown spots across the centre of the petals. 

Quite a few S.U stamp sets have  a small speckled stamp in, I can't remember which set  this one came from.

 Using a large ball tool and working on a foam mat, I shaped the petals by rubbing the ball tool on the back of each petal. Once all the petals were shaped  I flipped the flower over and working in a circular motion on the centre with a smaller ball tool to lift the petals  up to form a shallow cup. 
I carefully pushed the rolled up fringe through the hole in the centre of the flower. It should be a tight fit. Then added a little glue to the back of the flower around the stem.

 To add a stem I took some fine wire about 6  to 8 inches long and folded over the sharp end by half an inch and added a little adhesive before I  poked the end into the back of the flower.

Using green florists tape, I tightly bound the base of the flower and wound it tightly around the wire, gently stretching the tape as I worked to release the sticky wax substance  which makes the tape stick.

To join the flowers together to form a sprig, I laid the flowers side by side with one flower  about  two  inches higher and the bound the stems together with the tape. I continued  working my way  down the stem until I had five flowers bound together on each stalk.  Then I folded over the end of the last wire before binding it with tape to prevent the wire poking through the tape and injuring anyone handling the flowers.
 

Update... I thought you might like to see the  almost finished Secret Garden display. The children's work has yet to be added on and around the board.

 Here you can see how I used those orange flowers in the tutorial.

There are three glossy little ladybirds hidden in this display.

I made them by punching out three small circles from red card. I punched out two black rounded rectangular pieces of card using the word window punch. then glued the  red circle on the the black leaving just a tiny amount  of black poking out of one end and trimmed off the excess. 

I drew on the dots with a fine sharpie pen and then cover the ladybird with glossy accents.  I let the glaze dry over night, then applied a second and third coat leaving the layers to dry over night each time.

One member of staff has already asked if she can have them when the display comes down as she wants to turn them into earrings, another member of staff has asked for the flowers to put in a vase for her room. But I think they might brighten a dreary staff room.