The 12 Crafts of Christmas: Crystallized(tm) 3-d Paper Flower Ornaments

Layered Crystallized Die Cut Paper Flowers pre-grommets-love, love, love these K&Co. papers!

This magazine is so big, it won't fit on my scanner!  Yay!  Christmas Ideas 1960 Copyright Better Homes and Gardens

I will be making one of these eventually, but I was in a HURRY and the die cutter saved the day!  Isn't this yummy?!

This is part one of a two part post. My DH and I crafted up a storm the past two days and made something super fun together. Okay, I came up with an idea and stood over his shoulder directing while he executed the first half of it.  Then even with Cathie and Steve's Hot Glue Gun Helpers, I managed to burn the f*%$ four letter expletive beginning with the letter 'f' out of my finger tips working on the second half.  Yay!  What fun! 

This is part of what we made...but tune in tomorrow for the BIG REVEAL! I do mean B I G.

Did I mention it would be big?  I just want to be sure you understand the scope and scale of this.  Bigger than a bread box, smaller than a car big. 

But I digress...

In my stash of retrofabulous craft magazines, there are so many fabulous paper ornaments it would make your head spin. We all think ourselves clever, but honestly our grandmother's could craft circles around us.  However we do have some knifty tools she would have LOVED. There is so much good stuff in these mags, I could spend most of next year just on Retrofabulous Christmas Crafts. I am particularly smitten with the paper flowers, the tissue kind we *all used to make when we were kids. (*Meaning all of us of a certain age.) So taking a cue from the paper ornament idea, and bringing in some modern convenience for the impatient crafter...I had this stack of gorgeous double sided paper from K & Company, a Sizzix layered flower die and a Big Shot and away I went.

Fun, fast...fabulous!

Crystallized 3-d Paper Flower Ornaments
Margot Potter

Materials:
Double sided scrapbook paper (something of a nice cardstock weight)
Sizzix Flower Layers #4 655370
Flat back SWAROVSKI ELEMENTS (I used Swarovski sew on twist 3221 and flat back checkerboard 2493 Crystal 001 foil backs)
Small dimensional foam stickers
Aleene's Dry Adhesives Tape
Gunmetal or black grommets
Traci Bautista's Collage Pauge Sparkles or Ranger Stardust Stickles
18 or 20 gauge stainless steel wire

Tools
Sizzix Big Shot
Crop-a-dile
Foam brush or fingertip
Pencil or pen
Wire shears
Round nose pliers
Chain nose pliers

1. Select papers, mine were dark background with white accents on one side and white background with dark on the other, that way I could layer them alternating the backgrounds for dimension. Die cut your flowers, you will only need the largest and medium sized layer. You'll need two medium layers for every large layer.

2. Use a pencil or pen to roll the petals of the smaller flower into a curved shape. Repeat for all smaller flowers.

3. Use a foam brush or finger tip to add glitter to the lighter background layers. Allow to dry. You can opt to glitter it all up or even add dimensional glitter, totally up to you!  We had a quick deadline, so I schmeared and moved on with my day.

3. Adhere layers together on both sides using glue tape.

4 Place dimensional stickers on back of your flat back embellishments, I used four for each square and two for each circle shape. Attach to center of flower on both sides.

5. Attach a grommet to the longest petal on each flower. This helps give the paper strength.

6. We used steel wire to create s-hook shapes so the flowers could hang. Use shears and not cutters on steel wire or your cutters will die a sad death.  For a standard tree, you can make a regular hook with a larger loop to accommodate petal.