Giveaway! Geeking Out! The Art of Handmade Flowers

So, I reviewed this book a while back, but the nice people at New Sheer Creations sent me a copy to give away, and some supplies to make flowers with. (Thank you, Fe!)

Last night, I entirely redeemed a not-so-great day by diving into nylon flowers. Wanna see?

The materials are simple – I’ve made pantyhose flowers before, but I will say, New Sheer’s stuff is the Cadillac version. Wondering what those nested circles are?

They’re petal forms – just choose the size, wrap the wire around it and twist, and you have consistently-sized petals in seconds. Awesome!

The real genius bit, though, is this nylon thread. See how it’s kind of spun in texture? Well, that gives it incredible stretch, so when you wrap it around the base of a petal, it “grabs” the nylon fabric and stays in place. This makes it super easy to tie a double knot and anchor the petal.

UPDATE: Fe emailed me to say that you don’t even have to tie a knot – you can just wind the thread a few times around the base of the petal and it stays in place!

I love this stuff! It’ll have lots of other crafty applications…

Initially, I cut the nylon fabric into squares before stretching it over the wire. But that created more waste than I wanted. So then I tried leaving the fabric intact, stretching the end over the wire and then trimming it off. Worked great – and I was able to get a lot of petals out of a very small amount of nylon.

Incidentally, I love this variegated color! New Sheer also has solids in gorgeous colors.

…Then you gather up a group of petals, with a clump of stamens in the middle.

Oh – and you also need some leaves.

From there, it’s a matter of arranging and floral-taping. The book gives you great guidance on how to place the flowers and leaves along a stem to create replicas of specific types of flowers. Not that you couldn’t go wild and invent your own.

Voila! Here’s my take on a Eustoma from the book. I’ve been obsessively tweaking and curving the petals since I made it.

Now for the giveaway! Just leave a comment here and tell me what flowers you’re looking forward to most during this gardening season. I’ll draw a winner at random at noon PST, Thursday, June 11. International readers, you’re welcome to enter.

Good Luck!

UPDATE: Congratulations to MelodyJ, who won! I’m emailing you for your address now…

Tagged as: craft book