Friday, March 21, 2008

Dahlias---or Mums!---for Mom (with multi-sized template & tutorial)

This 3D Dahlia looks detailed but is easy to do. It just involves a little bit of straight-forward cutting. I made three PDF sheets of templates to resize it (a lot) and to conserve paper. :0)

How to:

1) Download or print templates (PDF & instructions are here.)

2) Cut a piece of patterned paper to 8.5 x 11 inches or use cardstock

3) Print on your cardstock or the back of your patterned paper; it will look like something this:

4) Cut the dahlias out (Cutting a circle and then cutting out the little triangles takes a little while but it's easy since it involves only straight cuts) :0)

5) Punch the center if desired and use a brad to layer them. I sponged on a little bit of Certain Celery ink for dimension, layered 5 flowers & shaped them to get this 3D dahlia:


The templates are Martha Flowers that I scaled and printed and then pasted on one sheet of paper and scanned. (For more details on how to do this yourself, please see this post. To make the ribbon slide under the leaf, I just cut around the leaf with an exacto blade and slid it through. (TIP: if you have white paper fraying showing along the cut leaf edge, you can just take a marker to it.)


These are the 3 templates PDFs <---link here; the other 2 types of flowers are daisies & cornflowers. There are also leaves with tabs.
Other card supplies:


Cardstock: Certain celery and Chocolate Chip, & patterned papers by Basic Grey (Urban Couture Poplin URB-375 & Stella Ruby Drinks at the Savoy STE-714)
Accessories: Printer, Close to my Heart long reach punch, Hodge podge brad, Silver Wire & eyelet, brads, white gel pen (faux stitches), Sakura quickie glue pen & Silver embossing powder (to freehand emboss the "Mom" sentiment on the leaf tag), S.U. 5/8" grosgrain ribbon Vanilla.

Tip to get the leaf for the tag: I didn't want to use a whole section for just one leaf, so
I just photocopied the leaf by covering the remainder of the patterned paper with white printer paper (to save printer ink.) I printed it on Naturals white cardstock and coloured the back of the leaf with a Mellow Moss marker

Happy Easter (if you celebrate it) & Happy Crafting! = :0-) <--(bunny)

5 comments:

Margaret McDonald said...

so cute.

JenMarie said...

BEAUTIFUL!!!

Kim Etherington said...

Did you cut all of these by hand? You crazy gal you. It's amazing!

Joyce said...

Love the templates. The end result is beautiful. TFS

Joyce

Julia Aston said...

Hey Mel - thanks so much for putting these on SCS - your flowers are beautiful! I want to try these as soon as I get a minute!!

artystamper

www.createwithjulia.blogspot.com