Wednesday 22 April 2015

A flower by any other name...

I've been having a go at my very first bookart. I'm making my first folded word, a present for my mum's birthday. 
As part of the decoration I've made some folded flowers... so I thought I'd do a tutorial on how to make them.

This tutorial is for the 5 petal folded flowers, not the roses.
You will need 5 squares of paper for each flower, glue (preferably a hot glue gun) but a pritt stick will work if you allow for drying time. 
A button, bead or gem to decorate is optional.

Take a square of paper, any size... you will need 5 squares in total, each the same size, for one flower. Each square represents 1 petal so the larger the square the larger the finished flower.
Try a 3 x 3 inch square to start with... about the size of a post-it note.
The paper can be plain on one side, this will not matter as the pattern will appear on both sides after folding.

Fold your square in half, corner to corner diagonally... try and be precise.

You will now have a folded triangle. With the long folded edge towards you fold each outside corner up to the top point. Crease the folds carefully.

Do one corner at a time.

This next bit may seem a bit tricky but don't panic. Take one of the points you've just folded, open it and squish it with the centre fold in line with the fold underneath.

When it is flat, fold the top point down in line with the top edge.

Do this to both sides.

Fold the little flap back inside, so that it's hidden front the front.

...like the left hand side of this one. Once you've folded the little triangle flap in you can continue to the next  and final fold.

Fold the outside edge in, to meet the other side of the fold, this will be quite a thick fold and you'll have to crease it well... try using the end of your ruler or the side of something hard to make the crease as crisp as possible.

That's it... now just roll the two outside edges in towards each other, to make a cone shape. You will see the start of the flower now, this is one petal.

You're going to glue down between the edges that meet... this will keep your petal in the cone shape. Try not to get the glue everywhere, we want the finished flower to be as pretty and as clean as possible.


You can mix your colours or keep them all the same; you can make these out of old magazines, telephone directories, store catalogues... even newspapers!

Take the first 2 cones and carefully glue down one edge, sticking the 2 together.

Keep repeating this process until you've stuck all 5 cones together into a circle. You can glue the finished flower onto a stick or glue some cord from the bottom, to hang from a christmas tree or stick many flowers onto a sphere to make a flower ball or a flower tree.

So, here are the finished flowers. My flowers are not as precise as I'd like them but this is mainly because of the difficulty I have with my fingers and hands misbehaving... however, all is not lost! By placing a bead, button or gem in the centre symmetry is restored. The centres ideally should be circular, not oval or irregular in shape. 

Any questions? Just ask and I'll be glad to help if I can... just be aware that there's a possibility of a slight delay in replying if I'm going through a Fibromyalgia flare or an ME/CFS episode.

Please let me know how you get on and if there are any inconsistencies with this tutorial... leave a comment, I'd love some feedback :)




7 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for sharing, instructions really clear and I'm sure if any one tries to follow they will end up with a brilliant outcome.

jackie telford said...

thanks for this easy to understand step by step instruction, great for beginners like me x

Annette said...

Brilliant tutorial & thank you xxx

yw said...

Great tutorial, very easy to follow, looking forward to the next one

dream it make it love it said...

Thank you all so much for commenting on my tutorial, I hope it helps clear up any issues when making these little flowers.
Please feel free to ask about anything...or any other tutorial you'd like to see... & I'll do my best to help.
Thanks again x

suebow said...

Fantastic nails

dream it make it love it said...

Thank you suebow, what did you think of the tutorial?