Of course you want your hand made cards to look like they took hours and hours of work. Heartfelt Creations flower collections really look labor intensive, but with a little practice, you'll be making them in no time flat.
Don't let the complexity of this beautiful paper rose fool you. It's not that difficult to put this together. Heartfelt Creations has an entire collections of gorgeous dimensional flowers that you can make. Some of their cards are so beautifully intricate that you just know they've spent hours upon hours creating them. Well, you'll get the same reaction when you make this card. But just between us, you can do it pretty quickly.
“They'll think you spent hours making this amazingly detailed rose, but you can do it in just a few minutes.”
Heartfelt Creations makes this process pretty painless by designing stamps and dies that create all of the flat layers and cutting them out with one pass through your die cutting machine. I used my Sizzix Big Shot. But the dies and even the flower shaping mold will work with many other die cutting machines too. Once you've stamped the images, you may choose to color them before you cut them out. I don't do it this way for one good reason - I stamp and cut out LOTS of rose petals and leaves at one time. Then, when I'm ready to make some roses for a card, half the work is already done for me. So I choose the different sized petals from my stash and color them with sponge and inks, or more often, with my Copic Markers.
There's no need to shade the petals or get fancy at all with your coloring. The shade and dimension comes from the shaping you'll do later. Don't waste time here. You'll see what I mean in the next step. Once your petals and leaves are colored, you can place them into the shaping mold and run them through your die cutting machine.
This step reminds me a little bit of those puzzles you did in pre-school. The ones where you fit the states or the farm animals into the right shaped hole. Well, this is similar. There are several different sized of petals and they each have their own shape. But I'll share a secret with you. If you put the pieces into the mold the wrong way, they still come out looking great and with a lot of texture. My only recommendation is to put them in face down, (or stamped and colored side down) so that the petals are bent down like a natural rose, instead of bent upward. But you know what? I haven't tried using them bent upwards. It might look great too. The point is that this process is easier than it looks and is a lot of fun. You'll probably be pretty impressed with yourself when you're done. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Put the petals into the mold, mist them once lightly with plain water, put the top on the mold and run it through your die cutting machine. When you open the mold up and dump them out, you'll be amazed with the texture. It's like a big pink embossing folder at your service. Here's the other thing. If you don't have the extra cash to invest in the mold, don't worry. I made these exact roses for a long time before Heartfelt Creations came out with the mold. And they turned out great! The mold just saves me a whole lot of time. And whether you use the mold or not, you'll still have a little bit of flower shaping to do to put these roses together. But don't fret! It's really easy and lots of fun.
You'll need a ball stylus and a squishy foam mat, (or the Heartfelt Flower shaping tools). Holding the stylus like a pen, just use medium pressure and roll the ball end in the center of a rose petal. It will begin to bend upwards like real rose petals. If you've already used the mold, there will be plenty of shape on the outside edges. If you don't have the mold, just turn the petal face down and repeat that medium pressure of rolling the stylus on the backs of the petals to give them shape. (There's a 5 minute video attached too) Now that you have all of the petals shaped the way you like them, grab your Art Glitter glue with the precision tip and start with your largest petal. Put a dot of glue in the center and place your next petals on top. Keep turning your petals as you glue them on so that they don't completely overlap the previous petals. And use that stylus to press down gently in the middle on top of that dot of glue. Then keep stacking until you're happy with the way your rose looks. Watch the video to see how I finish off the center of the rose with a little bud that hasn't opened. You can also use Prills for the flower center, but I'll show you that in a video on another day.
For this card, I used the Lawn Fawn Quilted Backdrop die and the My Favorite Things Big Hello Die along with a craft colored A2 card base. I used Tim Holtz distress ink in Antique Linen to sponge around the edge and in the center of the Quilted backdrop that I cut out of Neenah Solar White 80lb card stock. I glued it to my craft colored card base and then cut the Hello out by running it through my die cutting machine. Then, I glued my rose above the O in hello and glued the center of the O to the back of my rose. Now, see! That wasn't nearly as difficult as it looks. But it sure was fun to make. And it will really brighten someone's day when you give it away.
I hope you had fun crafting. If you haven't yet, check out my YouTube channel to watch the five minute video tutorial for this card. Give me a thumbs up and subscribe. I promise to try to bring you inspiration for fun crafting ideas.
Thanks for stopping by!