With simply paper and creativity anyone can create art


Thursday, November 8, 2012

Tutorial: DIY paint or mistable fabric flowers

It's been a while since I've posted a new flower tutorial. I have had this one sitting in my head for a while... making your own fabric "mistable" flowers (like the Pink Paislee ones) that you can mist, paint, ink, use gelatos, etc. Best of all - NO SEWING REQUIRED!


Supplies needed: 
- 4 squares of fabric (I used old heavy cotton IKEA drapes but old tea towels work great too)
- a button (or a penny)
- small fabric covered elastic (white is best)
- mist, paint, ink or gelatos (I used a pink gelato by Faber-Castell and a peach mist)
- a water mister
- strong, fast drying adhesive (I used Helmar's 450 quick dry)

Here is what the flower would look like if you don't paint/mist it (reminds me of the Pink Paislee mistable flowers).

Step 1: Hand-cut or use a die cutting machine to get 2 large, 1 medium and 1 smaller flower. Mine are about 5-inches for the large and 4-inch and 3-inch for the others. You can use this simple kirigami technique to hand-cut your flowers like I did.

Step 2: I created a paste by smearing a pink gelato into a plate and spritzing some peach mist into a plate.

Step 3: I dragged the flower edges in the paste, lightly misted the fabric with water to disperse the "paint" and crumpled the fabric to work the color in and make the edges shabby. I put less color on the 2 small ones (middle of flower). Let the petals dry now.

Step 4: I layered my dry flowers petals and put a thin dab of Helmar glue in the middle of each layer (off setting the petals) and adhered a button to the middle of the top layer.

Step 5: I gathered the layers and fastened the elastic to the bottom and put some 450 quick dry glue over it to keep it in place and let it dry.

Step 6: I flipped it over and ruffled into place.

Here are a few more I made with different fabrics by adding more water to my paste and creating a mist with my gelato mixture. Dryer sheets definitely soak up the mixture more than fabric does, and cream canvas and linen made it look much darker than white cotton.

Let me know what you think of these flowers!
Here is one of them on used on a layout...


Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Turn tags into cards (Helmar/Pion Design)

Last year I made these Pion Design paper tags as gift toppers for my two boys (aged 6 and 8 then) using the "Waiting for Santa 2" collection. Rather than throw them out after Christmas, I decided to save them and turn them into masculine cards for this year (for those times when you're in a hurry for a card :)  I used Helmar Premium Craft glue to adhere the tags to a beautiful piece of Core'dinations core-impressions cardstock (a Helmar preferred partner) and used their "Sand it Gadget" for a perfect fine grit sanding of the embossed clocks.


I covered the tag holes with brown bows and tucked plain white petal flowers to embellish a bit more.

On this one I tucked an extra flower petal layer in the corner too.

Check out the Helmar blog from now through November 10th for awesome creations from the design team using Core'dinations products!