How to make!

You might be surprised that the little flower sprig all started with the leaves. It started out with just wanting a vine of leaves for the fairy house I am working on. One thing leads to another and this is the end result.

                                                                                                                                                                                          

I love coffee filter paper, you can paint, dye, glue and it is stronger and more durable than most papers. Let’s begin this tutorial. Follow the folds of the coffee filter with a pencil and this will be your guide for laying down the cut pieces of 28 gauge wire. I will guess here and say I cut the wire 2 inches. Spread your glue over the coffee filter. I used a piece of cardboard for my spreading tool. Don’t you just hate getting glue all over your hands! After all of your wires are placed on the coffee filter, take another coffee filter and place on top, pressing down and smoothing out wrinkles( be sure to press around each wire). When dry ( I used a hair dryer to speed up the process ). Take a pencil and draw flowers. Make them as big or as small as you want. If you are going to make large leaves you might would want a longer wire down the center.


Cut out your leaves, but be sure to save the inside circle of your coffee filter, you will need that for the flowers.

Wrap wire with floral tape.

Paint and glitter the leaves. I used a light green paint watered down and when dry added a little clear glitter. Sometimes I use stick glue to add glitter, but in this case I used the glue shown in pic below.

 For the flowers, I am showing one way here , use a dime and trace your circles and draw petals like shown. You could paint them if you wish, but I did not for the flowers shown. Before cutting out, I covered the whole sheet with the adhesive gel and sprinkled with glitter and let dry.

I cut the flowers out with these scissors, but if you do not have the scissors then just follow your pattern and cut the old fashioned way. Poke a hole in the center. Cut a strip tulle 4 inches wide. Cut a piece of wire about 4 1/2 to 5 inches, string on a small pearl bead, gather tulle with your hand and place under pearl and twist wire. Pull tulle over the bead and cut, so the bead will still show. This is why I just leave the tulle in a strip and that way less waste of the tulle .                                                   

Add a dab of glue, string onto the wire, when dry, add floral tape to flower.                                    
Now it is time to take your wire and cut to the size you want the stem to be. I doubled the size and folded in half so, I was wrapping two wires, the stem was a little thicker than I would have liked, so next time I will probably use just a larger single gauge. Wrap your wire with floral tape and add flowers and leaves, spacing as it pleases you. I have a few ideas to go along with this tutorial and will share that a later date. One thing leads to another here in Sea Gypsy’s Studio! I hope your week is filled with lots of creative fun!