Have you ever seen some of the beautiful cards and scrapbook pages that feature beautiful floral embellishments only to think twice about purchasing any yourself when you have seen the prices? There are many ways to make them more affordable by simply putting a little (and I do mean little) elbow grease in and making them yourself.

The first way is to simply check your local dollar stores or craft stores and pick up a few bunches of small to medium flowers that you like. Watch for sales in your craft stores. They often run half off sales in the floral department. Even if you don’t find a sale you can pick up a bunch of small flower bushes for just a few dollars, and in various colors and styles. Be sure you pick up some white flowers too as you can dye most “silk” flowers with your chalks, dyes, paints, or markers to match your projects exactly. When you get your flowers home it is simply a matter of taking them apart. Gently pull the silk petals off the plastic stems. You will find they come off very easily. Some flowers even have centers such as are pictured below, which you can gently pull the fuzzy center off the plastic and glue to your brads. You will soon have more flowers than you know what to do with (which is another good reason to get white and dye them, they add up fast). Compared to what you would have spent in the scrapbooking aisle, you have saved yourself approximately $20-$30, depending on the availability. With this “found” money you can now buy yourself some new stamps, ink pads, papers……

The second way is to simply make your flowers using by either a template and hand cutting them, buying some of the wonderful new multi part punches, or using your Cricut with Sure Cuts A Lot and using some of the wonderful wingdings available for free on the internet. For the flowers shown below I have used three different types of color mediums to get the different looks, all on watercolor paper and using the flower punches. The first one is a watercolor with mica by Yasutomo. The soft colors and shimmer would be perfect for a wedding, anniversary, or baby. The second image is plain watercolors.

In the second Picture I used Ranger’s Distress Inks in Walnut Satin, Worn Straw, Frayed Linen, and Tea Dye. I simply turned the ink pads over and smeared them randomly on a waterproof work surface, sprayed them with water and then smooshed (to use a technical term) the watercolor paper down over the inks. You can repeat this process as often as you like to get the look you want. The colors will become a little deeper and begin to show a layered look. These would be wonderful for a heritage album or for anything you want to have an aged look to it.

The third and last method I will show you today is using Ranger’s Distress Sprays. Again using a waterproof work surface I sprayed the inks randomly on the work surface, then sprayed them thoroughly with water as these sprays are very dark. I then again smooshed my paper around over the work surface to coat the paper. With these I only used the process once as the colors are already so vivid.

Experiment and play, and soon you will find you are having as much fun making the flowers as you are with the rest of the project. No two flowers ever come out the same, and you have the freedom to mix and match your color for the perfect addition to your work.