Prima layout and paper rose flower tutorial

Hi there! As you can probably tell from looking at my layouts, I have a "thing" for flowers.  I love Prima flowers (of course!), but I also like to make paper roses. Earlier this year I was asked to make a layout with these paper roses for Scrapbooking m.m., the beautiful Swedish magazine.  This layout was published in the May/June issue.  It features a picture of me and my sweet hubby on our wedding day:

Almost everything on this page is Prima.  I used Shimmerz Spritz to color the lace and I painted the Prima patterned paper with a bit of Shimmerz paint to make the colors really pop. 

Here's a close-up of the paper roses:

The editor asked me to put together a step-by-step tutorial for the magazine article, so I thought I would share the tutorial here too.  But first, I have to give credit where credit is due.  I know there are different versions of this rose tutorial on the internet, but I first learned how to make them from a tutorial I saw on Maria's blog (I tweaked my version slightly).  We made sure to credit Maria in the magazine article too.   Thank you, Maria!

Here's the "how to":

1. Punch out three flowers using a 6-petal flower punch.  Of course you can also use a die-cutting machine to cut your flowers.  Fold them along the petal lines as shown.

2. On the first flower, cut a slit down the side of one petal to the center (do not cut off any petals on this one). On the second flower, cut off two petals, and on the third one cut off two petals. Optional: ink the edges of the petals.

3. Fold the flowers into a cone shape and snip off the bottom point so that your flowers won’t be so bulky.

4. Put a little glue onto one of the petals of each of the three flowers and glue one petal over the other as shown.

5. Now you will have the first three outside layers of your rose.

6. Using the handle of a paintbrush, curl the edges of the petals back. For a tighter curl, you can use a toothpick.

7. Your layers should look like this:

8. Stack the three layers in order of size with the biggest one on the bottom, and adhere the layers to each other with glue. Now you are ready to make two inside petal layers.

9. For the second-to-the-last layer, take your 2-petal piece and curl the petals back with the paintbrush handle (or toothpick) like you did with the big petals. Wrap it around itself in the shape of an ice cream cone. Leave it somewhat loose because you are going to be inserting the final petal in the middle. Cut off the bottom point.

10. For the final inside petal, take the one petal piece and curl back the edge, then wrap it around itself tightly.

11. Snip off the edge, and insert it into the 2-petal piece you just completed. Add these final pieces to the center of your rose, adhering them in place with a dab of glue.And there you go . . . a beautiful rose!!!

Give it a try!!