Tutorial - More Crinoline Flowers

Yesterday I published an Easter refrigerator magnet (see post below) with some pretty yellow spring-like flowers made from crinoline.  They were easy and fun to make and I think they added a lot to my spring piece.  Here's a quick tutorial on how I created those flowers.  

Materials Needed:

A cutting die for a five or six petal flower (pretty much any brand of die will work)

About a 3x3 inch doubled (two layers) square of crinoline

Non stick kraft mat

Reinker color of choice

Heat tool

For my little forsythia patch, I cut about 20 crinoline flowers.

On my craft mat, I sprayed water with a Mini Mister and then dropped 

4 drops of Barely Banana (SU) reinker.  

Mix up the water and reinkers.  

(I keep a rubber glove at my workstation.  It cuts down on inky fingers.)  

Totally saturate the flowers in your reinker puddle.  

Mush them around, turn them over until they are fully saturated with color.  

Mix up another puddle of water and reinker, in necessary.

Next, fold them in half and then in half again.
Pinch the base to keep them in that formation.

Dry with your heat tool.  Hold them down with some sort of tool so they don't take off. 

A couple of mine got away and shot off across the room - LOL!  

Don't get your heat tool too close or you will burn them.  

As they dried, I sopped up the extra drops of reinker/water mixture 

which added sort of a variegated color to my flowers 

- light in some areas, darker in others.  

Here they are.  All dried out and totally stiff again. 

I used cheese cloth to have something to anchor them too.  

Dipping the base into my pot of Claudine Hellumth Multi-Medium Matte (have I told you how FANTASTIC that stuff is?), I grouped them into bunches of twos and threes and stood them straight up.  They dried like that, quickly and securely.  

I cut tiny leaves out of crinoline with a Spellbinders die, dyed them in the same manner 

and glued them in between the flowers.  

And the best thing is I made them myself (love handmade!) for about 50 cents!  And by custom dying your embellishments, you have everything perfectly color coordinated.  Did you notice that I dyed the shabby seam binding so it matched the flowers perfectly?

If you can't find crinoline at your sewing center, check out my Etsy Shop.  I have it for sale for $4.00 for 1/2 yard/35 inch wide here.  Check out my other crinoline flower tutorial Easy Apple Blossoms.  

Let me know if you have any questions!  Thanks so much for stopping by.