Vintage Style Flower Tutorial

I was inspired by Donna Salazar's layered flowers (hers are more grunge style with 4-5 layers of old maps and book pages) and wanted to create a soft delicate, vintage looking flower that was a little easier to manipulate with a whopping 10 layers of various materials. My finished size is 5 inches in diameter. I've seen a similar paper flower technique used with only cardstock on several blogs... but using different paper weights and sheer materials is what gives this flower the shabby vintage look.

What you need is 10 circles (whatever size you want the flower to be) of various materials that you can get a brad through all the 10 layers. Good choices are doilies, tulle, tissue paper, cardstock, mulberry paper, vellum, book pages, etc. You want the layers to vary slightly in size and be of different paper/material weights for amazing texture.

Here is what I used, two tulle circles roughly cut to 5 inches, three layers of thin mulberry paper (can use tissue paper) wet torn to 4 inches for a fuzzy edge, a small 4 inch doily, a few white cardstock circles cut with deco scissors and punched with MS lace border punch 4-5 inches, the inner circle of a larger doily 6 inches. I also inked the edges of the cardstock papers in brown, used bronze glimmer mist, water mist and a large brad.

Step 1: Mist the doilies and mulberry paper on one side and gently crumple. Glimmer mist the cardstock on both sides and crumple.

Step 2: Gently unravel (be careful with the thin papers) and layer onto brad alternating materials.

Step 3: Crumple each layer at a time towards the center, starting with the top layer. Let it dry a little.

Step 4: Before it completely dries, gently unravel the layers, starting with the bottom and place as desired to reveal all the gorgeous textures. You can leave the last layer closed if you prefer.

Here is my finished flower with the middle opened to reveal the brad. So fast and easy to do!

Experiment and have fun using different papers and materials too. Happy Scrapping!