Saturday, July 10, 2010

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.



11 comments:

  1. Heather, with 2 brothers 5 brother in laws and 3 boys... I am always up for a manly layout!!!!! I loooovvveee the manly flowers and the whole theme!! Bunches of thank yous for taking time to do the tutorial! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow Heather - there`s are great flowers. thanks for the tutorial!
    The Layout is very nice!
    Hugs
    Andrea-Emmi41

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks Kelly!

    Dara,

    Wow that's a LOT of boys! LOL I'm glad you liked the tutorial!

    Andrea,

    Thank you so much for the compliment! I'm glad you liked the tutorial.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very cool idea! I could also incorporate in for a masculine card as welll.

    Cheryl
    cdjohnson1966@att.net

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for the inspiration!! Its such a no-no in my family to put flowers on a guy layout!!! I try to sneek them in once in awhile...LOL!!

    xoxo Karen Lee

    ReplyDelete
  6. Just a quick note to let you know that a link to this post will be placed on CraftCrave today [11 Jul 12:00pm GMT]. Thanks, Maria

    ReplyDelete
  7. Heather - those are awesome flowers!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Awesome Heather! Great LO and thanks for sharing the template...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks girls! I'm really glad you liked them.

    ReplyDelete