Tutorial - Twisted blooms

Personally I enjoy making homemade fabric flowers a lot more than paper blooms. I love the feel of fabric between my fingers and it never ceases to amase me how you can turn a simple piece of fabric into something extraordinary with a little thread or glue and some imagination. I've made these twisted fabric blooms a hundred times over but decided to add a little twist this time that I'd like to share with you.


Supplies
Fabric- Satin or tafata work well
Mask or stencil
Fabric glue
Gel medium
Fine glitter
2" cardstock circle
Flower center

Step One: Gather all your supplies together. Cut a piece of fabric 2" wide and approximately 20" in length.

Step Two: Scoop some regular gel medium onto your craft mat, add some fine glitter to the gel and mix together well until the glitter is evenly distributed in the gel.

Step Three: Lie your fabric flat on your work surface. Place your mask onto the fabric ensuring it's lined up straight.Using a paint brush, paint some of the glittered gel medium over the mask or stencil.

Step Four: Carefully lift the mask or stencil from the fabric to reveal your design.

Step Five: Place your mask onto another clear spot on the fabric and follow step three and four over again. Keep doing this until the entire surface area of the fabric has been covered. Set your fabric aside until the gel medium has dried completely

Step Six: Fold the fabric in half length-wise and glue down with some fabritac glue. Fold the one end of the fabric over forming a tip then fold pleats into the fabric as shown above. The fabric will start forming a natural spiral shape. Keep going until you reach the other end.

Step Seven: Cut a 2" circle out of cardstock. I used a piece of Prima packaging for my circle.

Step Eight: Add some fabric glue to the circle. Starting in the center and moving your fabric in a spiral while twisting, glue your fabric to the cardstock.

Step Nine: Keep going around in a spiral until you've reached the end. Tuck the end of the fabric under your circle and glue down. All you need to do now is add a flower center and you're done.

Here's one more look at the finished bloom

Making your own design by adding the glittered gel medium to the fabric is an interesting way of adding your own unique touch to an old flower tutorial. You can apply this same technique to many other fabric flower designs. These blooms will look great of a layout and you can make mini versions for cards, tags or ATC's.