Wisteria Bloom Tutorial... Just for Mandy :)

This may take some time... but Mandy from UK-Scrappers (she also has a brilliant blog here ) wrote me the most lovely message at UKS saying a tutorial for the wisteria blooms I made might be a good idea.

So, here are the blooms we're talking about:

For this tutorial, I won't be spraying the papers with Cosmic Shimmer Mists, as the glare from the shimmer will make it too difficult to see - it was bad enough trying to take photographs with the sun shining so brightly through the window. I'll do the tutorial for one bloom - please bear in mind you'll need about 10-15 of these. I used pale purple lightweight paper, which I glimmer-misted and left to dry (a heat tool for drying is fine too).

To make the bottom part of the bloom you'll need a five-petal flower shape - a small one. These measured about one inch across - and as you may start to guess, this is the fiddly part...

Fold up the bottom two petals so the bloom is almost in half. The 'X' shows the petal which you will need to glue to the main flower part. For the remaining four petals, fold themtogether and give them a little pinch. Where the white shows on this part, you'll have glimmer-misted/inked/painted your bloom.

Next you'll need a cocktail stick.

Roll the four bottom petals outwards and, starting with the inner petals, glue them together. Try not to get glue on the back petal, as when this is glued to the other part of the flower, you need a little space. When all four petals are stuck to each other, set this piece aside... the fiddly bit is now over! *lol*

For the next part of the wisteria flower, you'll need to cut out a rough, fat-looking kidney bean shape from your paper. Use whatever you have handy (rounded end of pencil or pen, small spoon, etc) to shape this into a sort of flattened cup shape - I do this in my hand.

When you do this part, the white side will be glimmer misted, and this is the side that needs to be on the inside of the 'cup' - I've used the coloured side to show the bloom here (sorry). Use a yellow pen/ink/paint to colour a small part of the bloom at the bottom. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, huh?!

Turn over the 'cup'. The 'X' marked here is on the reverse of where you just painted it yellow on the other side.

Now glue the 'X' marks together. The four rolled petals should sit nicely on the yellow part of the wisteria bloom. Now you'll need to punch or cut out a six-petalled flower in green paper - not rounded petals, but more spear-shaped.

Cut one of these flowers in half, and then stick it to the wisteria as shown below - so that two petals stick out each side at he bottom of the bloom, and one is almost hidden by the four rolled petals.

Et, Voila! You now have a wisteria flower.

Of course, there are a couple more componenets to making the whole wisteria spray - so the next tutorial for that will be ready soon.