2015 #1 Tissue Flowers {By Lucy Edmondson}

 2015 Theme 1: Fragile Papers

Hi everyone Lucy here, joining you this evening with a post about using the gorgeous damask tissue paper sold by PaperArtsy. I'm going to create tissue flowers, but making them less fragile and a little more structured by recycling clear packaging film which is moulded a little with your heat gun. This post is also about recycling,  in that I have used a glass bottle and the reeds from a home fragrance diffuser bottle once the perfume had evaporated as I always have lots of these left over. I love how the Chalk paint makes the glass bottle look almost ceramic!

Step One:

To start off with, I glued the clear packaging acetate to the tissue paper using Golden Matte Medium which worked really well, and left it to dry. It's the kind of packaging you get with things like Prima Mechanicals.

Step Two:

I then used the large flower from ELB 01 and applied Turquoise Fresco Finish from JoFY Limited Edition set to the petals using a piece of cut 'n dry foam and my ubiquitous ice cream lid palette! I cut a circle of foam, which is something I learned from PaperArtsy, to apply Cherry Red from the same Limited Edition set to the centre of the flower and stamped all over the 12" x 12" piece of tissue, and over the pieces of tissue-covered packaging acetate. I used one plastic piece per flower, and eight tissue pieces as I wanted my flowers to be 3 dimensional like 'pom poms', but if you want them flat to go on a box or similar, use about four per flower on top of your plastic layer, or more if you want a fuller flower.

ELB01

Step Three:
Cut out the packaging acetate flower as shown, cutting down into the petals and place it tissue side down on a heat proof surface. Apply your heat tool for just a few seconds and bend the base of the petals inwards slightly, towards the centre, and the tips of the petals downwards. The base of the flower should be quite flat.

Cut out all the tissue flowers by cutting a circle around them first with a one millimetre margin, and then snipping between the petals as shown. Then screw each flower up in your hand and carefully unfold. Stack the flowers on top of each other in groups of four, alternating the petals, and glue at the centres.

Step Four:
Now to the shrink plastic flowers for the decoration around the neck of the 'vase'. I wanted to emulate the look of the tissue flowers so I used the Turquoise and Cherry Red paints again. I stamped the same flower all over the shiny side of a piece of frosted shrink plastic with Jet Black StazOn. I then cut them out in the same way I cut out the tissue paper flowers. It's important when using Frescos on shrink plastic to water them down well so they don't flake so I added some water to some Cherry Red on my trusty palette and used a very fine paintbrush to paint the dots in the centre of the flowers on the frosted side.  I then used a wash of Turquoise and a larger paint brush to go over the whole of the petal area. I punched a hole for the twine before shrinking, using my Cropodile.

I then shrank the flowers with my heat tool. They would be great on bracelets too! There are other ways you could do the shrink plastic to get similar results, for instance I could have stamped with Teal StazOn and not used the Turquoise Fresco, or I could have used White or Clear shrink plastic, so have a play!

Step Five:
To complete the project I painted the bottle with Chalk from the same JoFY Limited Edition paint set, using Cut 'n Dry foam, and coloured the silver screw top with Treasure Gold in White Fire. I painted the reeds with Evergreen from the Lin Brown Limited Edition set. I took each set of four tissue flowers and glued them into the centre of the packaging film flower. I then spread plenty of glue along the top inch of the reed and placed it on the flat back of the plastic flower and glued another set of four tissue flowers to it, sandwiching the reed into the middle so the flower is like a pom pom. I made five of these. I attached the shrink plastic flowers around the neck of the bottle with twine tied in a bow. I stamped the wording from ELB 05  in Turquoise Fresco, and on the opposite side which you can't see, I stamped, 'Flowers Whisper What Words Cannot Say'.

ELB05

Finally.... 
I dipped my finger in the Treasure Gold and ran it around all the edges of the bottle, just to emphasize the shape.

Here's a close-up of the flower:-

I hope you will have a play at making tissue flowers. The packaging material is free and makes them more robust and gives them a little more shape. I love the crinkled edges achieved by the scrunching up! It would be fun to make them flat backed to go on boxes, frames, and  canvases. I love the black and white of the damask peeping through the bright turquoise and red, but it would also be fun to use some of the PaperArtsy plain waxed tissue and design them from scratch. I'd love to see what you come up with!

~Lucy~

These layered flowers have real depth considering they are constructed from fragile papers. Love the use of the bold Damask design with the brighter Ltd Edition paint colours, how often do we all have left-over scraps, this project is the ideal way to use them up. It is also a great way to recycle those pesky packaging containers, the overall project is beautifully done Lucy, thank you for sharing your step by steps and inspiration with us.

We would love you to join in with challenge #1: Fragile Papers. If you are inspired by any of our guests who have blogged on this topic over this fortnight, then please join in and link up your creativity HERE. 

All links go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. This link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, Jan 18th 2015, winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.