Crepe Paper Flowers

Today I have created flowers using Crepe Paper and have explained each flower below.   I love creating different types of flowers using  Susan's Garden Flower Dies.  This weekend I created a variety of flowers using  "Premium Crepe Paper". I purchased this paper Online from "PaperMart".  They sell two weights of crepe paper; heavy and Premium Heavy.     Premium Heavy crepe paper is the very best quality (180gms) in thickness. It has many more smaller and closer together crepes and feels almost like heavy fabric. It will expand approximately 40% more than standard "heavy" weight paper giving it extreme workability into any shape. With Susan's Garden flower dies and crepe paper, I created a Carnation, Poppies,  two shades of Violets and Jumping Jacks.  The leaves in the lower right were die cut using regular card stock.

I was recently surprised to receive a beautiful book, "Paper to Petal" by Rebecca Thuss and Patrick Farrell, from one of my blogging friends in Illinois.  It is a book about creating flowers with crepe paper. There are lots of beautiful crepe paper flowers, with a lot of different ideas I can use when I create my flowers with Susan's Garden dies.  I ordered a few colors of crepe paper to see how well it would work using my Susan's Garden flower dies.  The Premium Heavy Crepe Paper die cuts well and the flowers are fun to shape.  This crepe paper is much easier to use (shape) than the crepe paper streamers I have used in the past.  

In the picture above. I created the pink carnation using Susan's Garden Rose Dies.  I assembled it basically the same as you do a rose.  Here is Susan's Rose video showing how to create a rose.  I created the bottom two layers of petals as shown on video.  To create the center bud, I stretched the crepe paper out to get ruffles, rolled it on the tweezers and added glue to the very bottom. A lot of petals were added around that center bud and it was glued in the center of the lower layered petals.   A lot of smaller petals, that were well ruffled, were glued in between the bud and the larger petals until I had a nice full flower.  I used Ultimate Glue.  You should stretch the crepe paper petals to make them "ruffle" before gluing them.   It was fun to find out I could create both a rose and a carnation with the Rose Dies.

The orange flowers above, are poppies.  I used the Susan's Garden Poppy dies and created the flower the same as Susan Tierney-Cockburn has in her video instructions.  They turned out beautiful too. Before shaping, to get the black shading at the base of the the orange petals, I used Susan's Garden Pan Pastels.  What an easy way to get the shading I needed.  Next the crepe paper was stretched to ruffle the petals.  When you are working with crepe paper, be sure the petals are die cut with the lines of the crepe paper going from base of the petal to the top so it will stretch when pulled sideways.

All of the violets and jumping jacks were created with the Susan's Garden Pansy/Violets flower dies. When you are creating both the pansy and the violets, you need to pay attention to the petals you are adding.  First, along the top are two narrow petals, on each side are the smallest petals, and last you add the "double" petal at the bottom. You can see Susan  video here.  The jumping jacks were created with two shades of purple crepe paper and the bottom petal out of yellow crepe paper. I used a fine line marker to create lines at the base of each petal. To color the center of the violets, I used the orange Susan's Garden Pan Pastel.  I love how the Pan Pastels show up really well when you adding a light colored center to a dark petal - you can't accomplish this with a marker.  I colored the center on this small flower, with the Pan Pastel after the flower was assembled.   I used the yellow Susan's Garden Paper Pen, to create the yellow stamen in the very center of each flower.    All the flowers were attached to the calyx, cut from regular card stock. Crepe paper will not hold the cupped shape as well as card stock. The calyx and leaves were shaped with the tools from the Susan's Garden Tool Kit.  The glue I used was Glossy Accents.

The following products can be purchased from Ellen Hutson, LLC:

Susan's Garden, Pansy/Violet dies

Susan's Garden, Poppy dies

Susan's Garden, Rose dies

Susan's Garden, Flower Tool Kit

Susan's Garden, Pan Pastels

Susan's Garden, Viva Paper Pen Set

Glossy Accents

Ultimate Glue

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