Weekend Whimsy at Kiwi Lane

HI!  Happy Friday everyone!   I hope you are staying warm wherever you are.  We are on day 2 of "Snow Days" here in the St. Louis area.  Very different for this California girl, who had never experienced a snow day until yesterday.  :-)

Today I am featured on Kiwi Lane's blog with my Weekend Whimsy project…a bouquet of beautiful flowers to bright up anyone’s day...and maybe brush away a little of the winter blues.

 

We were given We R Memory Keepers Crazy for You collection to work with.  Its thick texture made making my flowers easy.  It really held up to being rolled and played with.  That is the key to these flowers – just keep using your fingers to give it the look you want.  The colors from the Crazy for You papers are perfect for the girls in my family.  We are definitely pink and purple girly girls here.  :-)  I decided to the shapes of the Sweetheart and Tiny Sweetheart templates were perfect to make some flowers.  So grab a few sheets of papers, your Kiwi Lane templates (of course), some leftover Chinese food take-out chopsticks and a little ink and glue, and follow along:

 

Flower 1

For this flower, I used Tiny Sweetheart 2T to create petals using the XOXO paper.  

This is actually a border strip paper, but by taking the heart petals and rolling them against a chopstick and my fingers to create the curve you see in the picture, you never seen the print on the back side. 

I took each petal and stuck each petal to the previous petal with a Glue Dot, making a cone shape.   I pushed a chopstick “stem” through the middle.

I made the middle from Tiny Sweetheart 3T and a scrap of yellow paper.  I inked the edges and then pinched the paper in the middle of each petal and curved them at the end by wrapping them around my finger.  Then it was a matter of adding a little glue to the back of the yellow and sticking it down to the petal cone (after punching a hole in the middle).  The center was made by wrapping some We R Memory Keeper twine in the center.  I used some Modge Podge to hold it in place and hide the chopstick tip.

Flower 2

I love the layers in this flower.  For this one, I started from the inside out. 

 

I cut 2 Tiny Sweetheart 3T from the Adore paper and poked a hole in the center.  After cutting a slit down the middle, I made a “roly poly” type flower by wrapping it around itself, securing it with Glue Dots in intervals along the way.  Once it was all stuck together, I GENTLY pushed the flower cone onto my table to curl the edges.

The second layer was made with 2 cuts of Sweetheart 3 from Light Pink cardstock.  I inked the edges and cut to the center, as done in the previous layer.  I used Rings 1 to cut the center out and then I folded flower at each petal to make it easier to wrap around layer 1.  Once this was secured, I attached them to the stem.  It turns out, I had to break out the glue gun to make this work.

The third layer is a repeat of the individual petal procedure from Flower 1, but I used Sweetheart 2 on the Adore paper.  I distressed the edges before I attached them with a little hot glue to the stem. 

Flower 3

This flower is made from the Adore and XOXO paper and Light Pink cardstock and a lot of the same steps from the other flowers.

The outside layer is Sweetheart 3, inked and pinched like the yellow layer on Flower 1.  The middle layer is Tiny Sweetheart 3T, using the same technique as the outside layer.  The center of the flower is from Tiny Accents 2T simply cut out, inked and attached to the other layers.  Again, I finished the center with some twine to hide the chopstick.  I brushed all the layers and twine with Modge Podge to give it alittle more shine and texture.

Stems

To cover the chopstick, I wrapped it in washi, all the way up the stick and about ½” of the flowers.  The key to this is to be careful and not pull too hard on the washi – it isn’t as stretchy as Floral Tape, and can tear easily.  Luckily, you can just start where it tore and keep wrapping.  Can you tell this happened to me?  ;-)

 I put the flowers in a little vase, and tied a little more twine around it, and viola! A beautiful bouquet.  When I originally made these flowers, I was going to send them to my mom for her birthday.  What could be better than flowers that don’t wilt (I have a seriously black thumb, so I’m all for flowers that don’t die)?!?  I even made a card to match using a little more WRMK paper and Tiny Tags 1, but my daughter decided the flowers had to go to her room – and I’m not sure how they would have shipped to California anyways.

 

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of spring, and seeing how Valentine’s paper doesn’t have to just be for Valentine’s Day!  I hope you try your hand at making some flowers.  If you, leave me a link to go check them out!

 

Cheers!
Kristy