Stunning Carnations in blue with a Tutorial

Hi guys, Liz here today and I thought I'd show you today how I made some carnation style flowers out of Foamiran, which is available at 14 Craft Bar,

For my Tutorial I have used some of the fabulous 0.6 Foamiran in 013 Sky Blue  but you could of course use a different colour, and a circle die measuring 7.5cm

I took a circle die I had in my stash and drew around the edge with a skewer, you can use any circle you have in your stash or draw one, Are wondering why didn't I die cut them out?

Well the reason is I then cut round the circles with some pinking style scissors,

Roughly following the drawn line,

When you have cut them out fold them in  roughly in half then in half the other way too,

At the center point where the score lines meet insert your skewer or similar to make a hole, sorry it's not showing very well on my photo

Next cut with some ordinary scissors down one of the fold lines you made previously going from the outer edge to about half a centimeter away from the middle, do this on the remaining fold lines till ...

All four fold lines have been cut,

The next stage is to take your scissors and cut half way in between the sections you've already cut as shown below,

continue going round cutting in between the original cut lines,

till you've done all the four sections,  Don't worry if some of your sections aren't quite equal depending on the size of the circle used, as it doesn't matter for this type of flower as the more random the petals look, the better

Take a couple of of the finished flower heads and cut down the middle to make them into two halves,

four pieces all together, shown below is one I have already scrunched,

So at this stage you can slightly scrunch each petal section between your fingers, to add a little extra detail and shape,

Take one petal at a time and very carefully scrunch the petal back and forth between your fingers for a couple of times, it will look similar to the picture below,

Do each petal in turn the same as before, hold the centre of the flower firmly with your other hand so the petals don't tear, as shown below

You can slightly unfold them at this stage if you wish, but I only did it lightly,

Next add some glue to a piece of wire,

Then take one of the flower heads you just scrunched and glue it on the next to the right hand side petal as shown below

Then while this is still hot fold the first petal one the right over the glue, trying to keep the petal top pointing upwards,

Continue to wrap the rest of the flower petal around the wire in the same way

 till the last one then glue it in place near the base of the petal, press lightly to hold but be careful not to burn your fingers!!!

Take your next flower half and glue it where the last one finished doing the same moves again till all four half flower sections are added,

Tweak any petals with your fingers that need re scrunching or just aligning up, but the look I wanted was for them to be imperfect as sometimes nature is, next take one of the larger full heads which again have been scrunched lightly and place the wire through the centre hole, then glue them in place,
here a couple have been glued in place, the single flower head is waiting to be threaded onto the wire

Continue to build up your other layers as shown staggering the petals as you go,

Here you can see I have used more layers on one then the other as this makes an opening bud styled look flower head too,

Draw  out a circle out of some green Foamiran and cut the edge the same way as before,

As you can see I slightly went off the line, this won't be a problem to the finish,

Heat this for a couple of seconds on a warm iron , then press the center with your thumbs lightly easing the foam down to get the cup shape, at this stage make a hole in the center and fix to the bottom of your finished flower head, glue in place behind your flower head....

sorry not shown, I then covered my wire with some floral tape and cut a couple of leaf shapes by hand to finish my carnation type flowers off,

As you can see each flower head is unique, which I rather like!!!

Here I've placed them in a jar for in my Kitchen,

Products used:

If you have a go yourself I would love to hear off you and see what you have made, as always any questions just ask!!
Happy Crafting!!!