Tutorial for Creating Berries

Hello Paper Crafters,

There have been a lot of questions on how to create berries for our floral arrangements created with Susan's Garden die sets.  Below I have prepared a tutorial for you so you can add these realistic berries to your creations.

The berries are made with small Styrofoam balls.  Above is a picture of the package of balls that Susan and I both use.  These can be purchased from Michael's Craft Store and are $2.99 a package. Michaels has a coupon for 20% off.  All the balls in this package are of uniform size and perfect for creating berries.  There are many other packages of Styrofoam balls from different craft stores and Amazon, however they seldom are a uniform size.

To color the balls, place them in a medium size zip lock bag.  Use any alcohol ink to color them.  Squirt in some ink, close bag and roll the balls around in the ink until they are all colored.  If you want them darker, open the bag and add more ink and roll them around again.  Sometimes to get the color you want, you might need to mix colors of ink.  When you roll them around inside the bag, be sure to try and get all the 'puddles' of ink that might be stuck to the inside of the bag rolled onto the balls.  You don't want to waste any ink coloring the bag.  The inside of the bag will be colored - just don't leave any puddles of ink on the bag.  The alcohol inks I have on hand are Copic Refills and Ranger Alcohol inks.

Once the balls are all covered in ink, scrape them out onto a coated paper plate.  Try to spread them out so they can dry.  If some stick together, they will come apart when dry.

To store your berries, you can put them in small zip lock bags, or in small plastic jars.  You can get cheap jars and bags from the Dollar Store.  

Use one of the Berry Branches from Susan's Foliage die sets to glue the berries on.  I like to add a drop of glue on the branch and place the ball into the glue.  You can also hold the ball with tweezers and dip the bottom in glue then place on the branch.  If you want a cluster of berries, let the bottom row dry then dip a ball in glue and place on top of the dry berries to create a cluster.  I use a black, gray or brown fine tip pen to press down on the end of the berries, once they are all dry.    I die cut the branch out of watercolor paper and color them either green or brown, depending on the arrangement it will be added to.

For my card above, I used Susan's new Birds & Bees Autumn Foliage Die set.  All the leaves were die cut using water color paper and colored using a variety of  inks to color.  They were shaped using her Flower Tool Kit.  The design on the background is the Spellbinders Diamonetta Background Glimmer Plate.  I used red foil.  The sentiment is one of the Spellbinders BetterPress Sentiments.