Handmade flowers

For whatever reason I have been in the mood to make flowers lately. Perhaps I'm trying to get in the springtime mood even with all this snow... Anyway, I just thought I'd share how to make these little cuties.

I've made these out of felt, plain old cotton, notebook paper, grungepaper, and even leather. Start off with a sheet of whatever material you are going to use. This time I just bought some 8 1/2 x 11 sheets of felt I got at HL for 25 cents.

Then I cut a 5 petal flower into the fabric. I used my the Walk in my Garden cartridge for my Cricut and cut out a template before cutting it out of the felt. There are also punches you can use or just freehand it. You will need 3 flowers for this project. (The pic below has 4 flowers because for some reason I decided to take a picture of what I used to trace the flowers...)

When you have them cut make a dot in the center of each flower, like this:

Then take your scissors and cut a straight line from the edge (in between the petals) to the dot. Set that flower aside. Do the same for flower 2, but cut out one petal. For flower 3, cut out 2 petals. When you get done, you should have this:

(At this point, if you are working with paper, you'll want to fold the petals back so they have a little bend to them.)

Then, fold each flower over so that the edges *just* overlap. Glue in place. What glue you use depends on what material you are using. I've used Super Glue Gel, hot glue, Aleene's craft glue, glue dots, The Ultimate and they all work well on certain materials. Keep in mind that you might need to use a little clip to hold the petals while the glue dries.

Tip: If this is your first time making these flowers, start with the full 5 petal flower first and work your way down to the single petal. I swear at the single petal a lot...

When you are done you should have this:

Next, flip the 2,3,4, and 5 petal flowers over and slip off a bit of the point.

Take the single petal and put it inside of the double petal. Pull the point of the single petal through the hole in the double petal. Here's a top view:

 And here's the bottom view:

 Next, put glue around the bottom and put it in the 3 petal flower. Make sure to pull that point through the hole in the bottom of the flower.

Keep layering the flower. When you get done the point will still be sticking out of the bottom, so it will look like this: (I switched to paper so you could see it easier)

 Here's what the flowers look like when they are done. How cute! These ones are made out of felt, scrapbook paper and grungepaper.

 Then you can either add them to a scrapbook page, an altered composition book or make a cute hair tie: