Monday, May 05, 2008

Faux Foldy Flower Tutorial

The difference between faux and "real" foldy flowers is the the real ones use a tea bag fold assembly. I noticed many were using the foldy flowers for 3D cutting, so I thought why not just make them for 3D anyway? More versatile and less paper :) If you are a die hard fan of the originals, let your voice be known and enough "squeaks" and I will make some more tea bag folding versions.

This is just one way to use them.... I have a friend ( our lovely LILY ) who has used them in parchment craft, printed the flowers on parchment vellum and then moulded the petals with her tools, I will show soon :))

Here is the card; I had a difficult time capturing the iridescent highlights so I have attached 2 versions.


The Flower:
I cut out the flowers from the light purple faux foldy flowers sheet. I went a bit overboard and lightly shaded the tips of the petals with a light pink coloured pencil and darkened the lower parts with a violet pencil, yes I blended the pencil with some OMS... but not necessary. The colours are a bit off, my camera and the fluorescent lighting did not like each other.


I took each flower and scored down the center of each petal, right through the center so a 6 petal flower takes 3 scores.... can also be scored with ruler and scoring tool.


Turn the flower white side up and pinch all the petals.


And viola...



Repeat for however many flower parts you want to use. I used 2 large flowers, 2 medium and 1 small for the purple "carnation".

Put some white tacky glue ( again doesn't matter what type of glue but you will want a really good hold and some "wiggle room" if the petals don't align right initially.) on the wrong side in center of the flower you are going to glue on top. Attach to center of lower flower staggered, you might have to use something pointy and press down on the flower center. Like so....


I then got out some iridescent paints ( Pearl Ex Jewels Watercolor Palette), using a liner or skinny waterbrush, I brushed the tips of purple petals with iridescent red ( a light lovely pink you can only see when the light hits it), iridescent gold on the little pink flowers, gold in all the flower centers, and green-yellow duo I used to line the veins and edges of the leaves. For the leaves, I also shaded the veins with a dark green colored pencil, I used the scor-pal to deboss the center and veins of the leaves then bent and moulded the leaves with my fingers, THEN I painted them with the pearl ex :). The flowers were primped and pinched to increase their "fluffiness".

I used a gate fold for this card and also used the scor-pal to emboss lines around the white diamond backing CS. The purple paper can be found in the Freebie I posted HERE.

The photos of the card just do not do it justice. Anna Griffin... eat your heart out :)

Another thing... these flowers were printed on matte card/coverstock and the flowers are quite stiff and will most likey be hard to mail unless they are put in some padding or a box type envelope a la Maria? You could use regular inkjet/copy paper but they might flatten out if mailed.

9 comments:

Joanne said...

Gorgeous card Tracey - the flowers look so pretty! I like your idea of adding extra colour and twinkle after printing - will have a play with this. Already made one card - but am sure there will be more!!

Tranquilita said...

Thank you so much for the tutorial, Tracey!

Anonymous said...

thanks for the tutorial!

Arlene,
Gig Harbor flowers

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the tutorial on you faux foldy flowers. I love the 3-d and hope you will be doing more in the future. I like the tea bag folded ones but the 3-d are so much easier and the outcome is beautiful. Thank you for creating these beautiful flowers. You are a very talented lady.

Lizzystamping

TA Carbone said...

I know Lily from many years ago when she was on a Yahoo Group with me. She is the one who invented the Dahlia Fold that everyone is using now. Please tell her TA says hi

Toniann
aka TA
http://carbonescorner.blogspot.com

Joy said...

Thank you so much for the beautiful flower and the tutorial!

Ratmomma / Carolyn said...

I have just discovered your bklog and I am SOOOOO impressed! I am a hybrid scrapper and crafter who also designs, so I know how much work you put into your work. THANKS!

Marion said...

Thank you so much for this flower and the tutorial. I really like it and just at the moment am playing around with it.
Marion from Germany

Anonymous said...

Lovely cards Tracey and a really neat tutorial. Thanks for sharing. I love both the faux and teabag versions of our flowers.

Minerva