100th Post! My Paper Rose Shortcut Tutorial

Wow!  Can't believe it, but I'm already to my 100th blog post!  To celebrate, I have a very special tutorial for you . . . for how I've been making paper roses lately.  You might remember I fell in love with the paper roses I first saw created by Julie Williams, and I then went on to create my Flowers for Mom card.  Well, I've come up with a shortcut for putting these beauties together.  Because my creative time is limited (and interrupted early and often) by my wonderful little guys, I like to be able to put things together quickly -- without having to wait for glue to dry, if possible!  So, I decided there had to be a way to make the roses with glue dots.  Guess what?  There is!  And, now I'm going to share it with you . . .

Start by punching four flowers from card stock or designer series paper -- for these, I used the Five Petal Punch:

Then, cut off petals from three of the flowers, so you are left with a 5 petal flower, a 4-1/2 petal flower, a 3-1/2 petal flower, a 2 1/2 petal flower, and a single petal.  Here's a visual:

Next, put a glue dot onto the 1/2 petal "tab" on the 4-1/2 petal flower, and bring the tab behind the petal across the gap from it, hiding the tab on what would be the outside of the flower. 

Then, curl the flower petals.  These petals were curled under several times -- the amount of curling you do, will depend on how tight you want your fiinished rose to look.  You can use a paper piercer to wrap the paper around and create the curl, or perhaps safer would be the technique I've seen my friend Jane Matsumoto use -- pull the paper across your closed scissors almost as you would if you were curling ribbon.  (Maybe Jane will make a tutorial to show her excellent technique for this, if she hasn't already?  Hint, hint.)  For these flowers, I started the process with the scissors, but then ended up rolling them more by hand, to get the curl pretty tight.  The curl of the petals is something that can be adjusted a bit further once the rose is completely assembled as well . . . just easiest to get a good start on it at this stage.

Repeat these steps with the 3-1/2 and 2 1/2 petal flowers, and roll up your single petal, so you end up with this:

Now, it is time to assemble the flower!  (You could also sponge some color around the edges of the pieces at this stage, to add some extra 3D oomph). 

The last time I showed this assembly step, I was asked if it was better to assemble from top to bottom or bottom to top -- I had been doing bottom to top, but that got me thinking, why not try the other way.  Well, turns out top to bottom does work better for me (thanks to Sparrow for making me test this!)  So, put a glue dot on either side of the bottom of the single petal roll, and carefully insert that into the center of the 2-1/2 petal piece so you end up with this:

This would make a cute little but.  But, for a larger flower, again, use two glue dots on either side of the outside of this new piece, and insert into the 3-1/2 petal piece.  The end result should look something like this:

Again, you could stop here, or if you want a larger rose, use two glue dots on the outside to adhere this piece to the 4-1/2 petal piece, like so:

And, finally, adhere this piece to the 5 petal piece, either one or two glue dots will work fine at this stage.  Here's the finished product:

You can do this same process using other punches -- such as the Extra Large Flower Punch.  Here are some photos of the process with that.  First, how to cut the four punched pieces:

Second, how each piece looks after its petals are connected by a glue dot, and petals curled.  Well, and actually in this photo, the assembly process is already underway:

Here are the two glue dots on the outside of the 3-1/2 petal piece as it is about to go to the 4-1/2 petal piece:

And, the finished product:

And, a side view:

Finally, for sake of comparison, here are four roses I've created.  The top two were made using the Extra Large Flower Punch, and with the leaves just slightly curled. 

The bottom left rose is the one created in the photos above using the Extra Large Flower Punch, and the bottom right is the one created in the photos above using the Five Petal Flower Punch.

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!  Look forward to seeing what you create with it!

- Michelle