Wisteria tutorial...Part 2

Oh, yes... tis I again with another fiddly, annoying part to the wisteria bloom.

This is for the little buds that you'll need to finish off the ends of the spray... and you'll have to excuse the state of my fingernails in the photographs *lol*

Okay, so we start off with cutting out a small heart from a piece of paper - I didn't use any cosmic shimmer mist for the buds, as this would just make it harder to glue them, and the misting wouldn't really show anyway.

 Using a cocktail stick, roll the edges of the heart inwards - keeping the coloured side to the outer, and hiding the white side.

 Next you have to glue this carefully, and ignore the state of my hands and nails completely *lol*

 A six-petal flower shape is then used - I punched my flower shapes from a green piece of paper - either a 1 or 1.5cm punch will be fine. Then simply wrap the green flower shape around the top half (the pointy end of the heart) of your bud. That's it for those... now onto the slightly open bud:

 Cut out a smaller heart shape - and preferably a little fatter than the previous one used. Turn the heart shape colour-side-down onto your palm, and work the paper until it's a flattish cup shape. You will need to keep the crease down the middle, so squish that a bit when you turn it over to make it prominent...

 Preferably using the 1cm flower punch, and using the green paper once again, punch out a flower and then cut in in half. Wrap this half flower round what was the pointy end of your heart and glue. It's done - how quick was that?!? You can pinch the open end of the second bud together, and glue it carefully - and when using it on a layout, you'll need to use silicone glue, pinflair, or foam pads to keep it raised.

So there it is... three buds to make a wisteria spray.

The leaves are simply die cut rose leaves, embossed and then bent in half and pinched at the end to hold their shape. These were misted with cosmic shimmer mists, and held in place on the layout with silicone glue.

All the stems are simply stitched - the leaves stems have a little spiral at the end... just because I liked it, and wisteria has these little spirally tendrils too. To be honest, making these blooms was a fiddly pain! *lol*... AND... they look pretty dull and boring just sat there singly on their own... but put them together, and I think they look pretty good - even if I do say so myself *lol*

And please remember... If you enjoyed this tutorial and the wisteria, then I thank you... if you didn't like it, then you have Mandy to blame *lol*

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.

Wisteria...Finally!

When I planted my little wisteria, everyone who I asked said that it would flower in it's second year after planting. I watched it grow at a tremendous speed, and in the second year... it didn't flower! I waited five years for this beautiful plant to bloom finally in late April 2011 - but it was so worth the wait!

I don't think I've ever worked so hard in putting a layout together - from stamping with my favourite swirly La Blanche stamp, and also using a Tim Holtz stamp from the Visual Artistry collection (Urban Grunge CSS25917)... to making each and every little wisteria bloom and leaf... to the huge amount of hand stitching! I started with a 12x12 paper from the "Rose Garden"  collection of papers (PMA1671300) and stamped using Milled Lavender (68976)  first and embossing it with clear powder, followed by swirls and text using Dusty Concord (78179)  Ranger inks over the top of the embossing. I then layered up a mix of scrap papers from the Rose Garden Collection, and also remnants from the Heather Capsule set of papers that are STILL in my stash drawer. I looked carefully at the wisteria to see how they're put together - but nomatter how I tried I couldn't make my paper replicas look as good as the real thing. I used plain papers and sprayed them with a mix of Cosmic Shimmer Mists.

The leaves were done in the same way - and I embossed them to make them look more authentic. When I glued the flower and leaves design to the papers, I stitched stems through them just to bring it all together a bit (not explaining myself very well here... sorry!). I topped off the paper wisteria bloom with a couple of ribbon bows in co-ordinationg colours.

The triple-fold design at the bottom right-hand corner is stitched to hold it down... and I also added matching buttons (found in my stash drawer).

The bright green butterflies are Anita's Decorative Toppers (ANT373100) - I cut around them to remove any white edges. I didn't really plan this layout, but I did have some idea of how I wanted it to look. I'm quite happy with the result - except for one really silly mistake. Look closely at the line of small photographs... the bottom one is upside down! lol. Well, this took me ages... and I'm not changing it now!