When I wanted to make flowers for the first time for a project I was doing I didn't have a clue where to even start! This tutorial is for those who are in the same position.
The focus is not to give you directions for specific flowers but rather ideas and techniques for developing your your own so that you can experiment and make your flowers unique.
Nothing I can tell you here will be of more value than good pictures of the real thing. Seed catalogs and gardening books are invaluable as reference material. Try a secondhand bookstore for gardening books with good close-up pictures of flowers.
TOOLS AND MATERIALS
The tools you need for making paper flowers are few.
All you need are small sharp scissors, needle point tweezers,
a medium ball stylus, wire cutters, cupping pads and paper punches. All of these tools are also very useful for making other miniatures.
The materials you will need are paper, wire, glue, paint and markers.
You will also need paper towels and waxed paper or a plastic lid.
Let's get more specific.
Scissors.
Small sharp scissors with pointed narrow blades make the job of hand cutting much easier. You will find these scissors sold as mustache scissors or cuticle scissors or in medical supply houses as suture scissors.
Tweezers.
Eyebrow tweezers will not do! The type of tweezers you need have sharp, smooth needle points. They make the job of picking up deicate petals much easier! They are known as splinter tweezers.
Stylus.
A ball point stylus is also used for embossing and can be found at hobby stores. Some have a differernt sized ball on each end and some have just one ball depending on the brand. They come with different sized balls and all are useful but for general purposes choose one with a medium sized ball.
Wire Cutters.
An old pair of scissors will cut the fine wire you need for flower stems. Nail clippers make fine wire cutters too.
Cupping Pads.
You will need cupping pads to shape your flower petals with the stylus. There are two kinds of cupping pads, hard and soft. A mouse pad is a soft cupping pad and is used less often than a hard cupping pad. A piece of a plastic placemat makes a great hard cuppping pad. Use the back, non shiny side where there is no pattern. Besides a mouse pad a piece of Fun Foam makes a good soft cupping pad. Use it on top of the hard pad to cup flowers that need very deep cupping such as Petunias.
Paper.
Many kinds of paper can be used. Old envelopes in the right color, painted typing paper, tracing paper, rice paper, tissue paper, crepe paper or specialty papers such as the expensive Japanese crepe paper the professionals use.
Look at different paper, especially those that have a texture. Cone coffee filters have a great texture for leaves! The prefered method is to paint the paper so that you can choose the right colors.
Wire.
Whether you use paper covered or painted wire is a matter of personal choice and what is easily available to you. Cloth covered wire is not the best choice. The most commonly used gauges are 28g 30g and 32g.
Glue.
The brand of glue you choose is also a personal choice. Any type of tacky glue works well with paper covered wire. If you use painted wire you will also need to use your favorite super glue.
Paint.
Craft acrylics are used for painting paper, thin the paint a little with water to paint sheets of paper. Sloppy painting, thus giving uneven coloring, (shading) is a good thing!
Markers.
Plain old kids markers with fine tips are great for tinting and shading your flowers. A package of 24 with lots of different shades can be found at the Dollar Store.
Paper towels, waxed paper , plastic lids.
More about paper towels later. Waxed paper or plastic lids make good, throw away containers for glue and paint.
~~~ Basic Flower Making ~~~
