Burlap and Denim Flowers

I came up with these flowers because the boys in my family throw fits when they see flowers on the scrapbook pages I make about them. I can't count how many times I've heard them say that flowers are for girls. This is the compromise I came up with, burlap and denim flowers! Sounds pretty manly right?

First, I used a Sharpie marker to trace a small Tupperware container on the burlap so I could get a nice circle. You could try to cut them out freehand, but the material shifted a lot so I ended up with a big mess on my first attempt. The denim is easier, I just drew smaller circles on the material.

After I cut them out, I put them on my craft sheet. I used my Tim Holtz Vintage Photo Distress ink, and an inking tool with a foam applicator to apply color around the edges of the circles. Instead of pulling in toward the center of the circle like you do when distressing paper, I pulled out. I wanted to fray the edges of the burlap and denim. The burlap frays rather quickly, so make sure you don't pull too much off. If you have it as frayed as you want, but don't have enough ink on, you can just push the inking tool gently down on the top of the circle. The denim takes a bit more to distress. I ended up having to pull on some of the strings to unravel them a bit more.

Then I located some masculine hardware in my stash. I found a huge silver and black brad, and thought it would be fun to thread it through a Tim Holtz Gear since the page I intended to put the flowers on was one with a truck on it.

I poked a hole through all of the layers with my paper piercer, and added the brads. One of the gears had a smaller hole so I found a solid black brad and used it. It turned out okay because I liked the variety of not having all three flowers exactly the same. After I attached them to my page, I punched some branches out with the Martha Stewart Branch Punch and tucked them underneath the flowers for some added detail.

This is the finished layout! Feel free to click on the image for a larger view.