Colourful Card and Tissue Paper Carnations Tutorial

Hey folks, this is a big post with loads of piccies, but I've made the photos small so it shouldn't take too long to download. Anyway, there's a tutorial so it's worth it - woohoo :-)

This week, Simon Says Stamp and Show...colour! Well, I finally bought some pan pastels at the Belfast Craft show last week (had a fabby time meeting up with Lee and spending way too much, but that's another story...). I spent the weekend having a play so thought I'd share my first Pan Pastel card:

"Believe all things are possible"

This has my standard acetate tunnel construction (see project 3 on this post for tutorial). The background has blended pan pastels with stamped flowers and grasses. The clouds are done with splats of picket fence distress stain over the pan pastels. I love the effects from the shadows with this type of construction.

"Tissue paper carnations"

The flowers are all handmade from tissue paper (see later for the tissue paper carnation tutorial). You can just make out some of the background stamping in this photo.

"More flowers"

The tissue paper for these flowers was coloured with pan pastels and a large sponge. The pastels are the best thing I've ever found for colouring tissue paper!!!

"Wire leaf"

I used wire to make all these flowers' stalks, turning the other end up to make a clip to attach all the flowers to the card. Some extra pieces of wire were curled to make leaves.

"Stamped on acetate"

I love this aeroplane and banner stamp from Sam Poole's "Vintage Aviation" set. It is stamped along with the sentiment onto heatproof acetate using black archival ink and embossed in clear, then picket fence distress paint is painted onto the back of the banner with a paintbrush to make the sentiment stand out. It looks as if the plane is really flying!

"View showing construction"

This view shows the construction and different layers better. There are flowers on the background, attached to the acetate, and finally fixed to the front. The cardstock is also decorated with pan pastel flower and grass stamping but it's hard to see in the photo.

Ingredients:

Creative Expressions Sam Poole stamp set: Vintage Aviation

Creative Expressions stamp set: The Village (flower & grass stamps - thanks to my good friend Kathy who so kindly sent me this stamp set!!)

tissue paper flowers with wire stalks

Pan Pastels: Ultramarine Blue Shade, Magenta Extra Dark, Magenta & sofft tools

Versamark ink pad

Archival ink pad: Jet Black

Embossing powder: Clear, detail

Distress paint: Picket Fence

Distress stain: Picket Fence

Distress markers: Spun Sugar, Dusty Concord

cardstock: purple 300gsm, white 160gsm

tissue paper

construction wire

adhesives: PVA, glossy accents

Entered for the following challenge:
Simon Says Stamp and Show... Colour


...and here's the promised tutorial for the tissue paper carnations. For the smaller carnations, I make the stalk from wire, but the larger ones are just as good with cotton bud centres.

1. Everything you need - tissue paper, coloured marker, carnation creations dies & cotton bud

 

 2. Take a full sheet of tissue paper and fold in half

3. Fold in half again (thickness = 4 sheets)

4. Fold in half again (thickness = 8 sheets)

5. Fold in half again (thickness = 16 sheets)

6. Place on die cutting plate and arrange dies

7. Pass through roller-type die-cutting machine a few times, turning the sheet if necessary, until all the layers of tissue paper have cut through.

8. Separate the flowers, but keep the layers of tissue paper in the dies for now.

9. Take one of the flowers and carefully lift out one petal, lifting all the layers of tissue paper together.

10. Now colour the edge of the petal with the marker. You do not need to separate the layers, lifting it out of the die like this will allow all the edges to be coloured without separating them.

11. Work your way around the rest of the petals, replacing each into the die before moving onto the next one. Pop out the centre hole using a pokey tool or similar.

12. Remove the tissue paper from the die, holding all the layers together.

13. Thread a cotton bud through all the layers. You may need to wiggle it slightly to push it through. Be careful not to tear the paper. If it's too tight a squeeze, you can cut the bud from one end and thread it through that way.

14. Carefully separate the top layer of tissue paper and push to the top of the cotton bud.

15. Use the other hand to scrunch the petals up tight around the tip of the cotton bud.

16. Separate the next layer of tissue paper and push it up towards the top of the flower...

17. ...and scrunch it around the previous layer.

18. Continue separating each successive layer...

19...and scrunching the petals around the previous layer.

20. Take care with the layer separation, they can stick together,

21. but you don't need to worry about the scrunching.

22. The more uneven, the better.

23. Real flowers are never perfect!

24. And neither are mine :-)

25. Not quite finished yet, we need some glossy accents.

26. Add a drop to the base of the flower where the bottom petal touches the stalk. This will seal the petals in place and stop them falling down the stalk. Just leave it upside down to dry (I find a plastic glass useful for this). Once dry, you can fluff the flowers out a bit if you want.

I got carried away and made a whole bunch!