A Tutorial and a Goodbye

With great sadness I want to announce that this will be my final project as a Design Team Member for Frosted Designs.  I have been on the design team at Frosted Designs since it began all the way back in Fall of 2009.  It has was my first design team and I tell you it has been one heck of a time designing for them.  It is a wonderful challenge blog and I have had the privilege to work with some other amazing paper crafters. 

I made the decision to step down from the design team because I felt like it was time for a change and that I needed to branch out and try some new things.  I must admit that a big part of me is sad and feels like I am leaving my home, but another part of me is excited for new opportunities in the future.  I wish Barb, Diana and all the other wonderful ladies at Frosted Designs all the best and I certainly hope they don't mind if I stop by to play along with their challenges every now and then.

Now on to more exciting things.  We have a tutorial that I created for you over at Frosted Designs this week!     

This week at Frosted Design we are showing you how to make wet distressed flowers.  These are incredibly easy and take no special punches or equipment to make.  You can see the finished product in the layout above.  To make these flowers you will need:

scissors
scraps of patterned paper or cardstock
distress ink
mini mister or other spray bottle of water (not pictured)
adhesive - I prefer Zip Dry Glue
Gem, brads or other flower center

Step 1)  Take your patterned paper or cardstock and cut out a rough circle with a wavy edge a little bit bigger than you want your finished flower to be.  It doesn't have to be a perfect circle, nor does the edge need to be perfect.

2)  Cut out increasingly smaller circles just like you did with the first.  Depending on the size of the flower you want depends on the number of layers you will want.  I tend to stick with either 5 layers for larger flowers and 3 layers for smaller flowers.

3)  Take your scissors and cut small triangles evenly spaced around the circles to create petals.  I usually do 8 triangles on larger circles and 4-6 on the smaller ones.

4)  Ink the edges of all your flowers with Distress inks.  It is important to use Distress inks as they will run and look more like natural coloring when you get them wet.

5) Using a Mini Mister or other spray bottle filled with water spray your flowers fairly liberally till the paper is fairly wet, but not soaked.  You want it to be pliable, but also able to retain its shape.

6)  Using your fingers smoosh the petals so the stand up and are scrunched.  You don' have to make all the petals do the same thing.  Some can be turned more under while some may be turned up and others just smooshed.  Let the flowers dry.

 

7)  Put a small dab of glue in the center of each layer and glue the layers together with the largest on bottom and the smallest on top.

8) Affix a gen or a brad in the center and your flower is ready for your next project.