Curled Flower

A week ago tonight I was at a crop with my scrapbook club.  We did a flower make and take (courtesy of Lori Rogers) and I learned how to put an old technique to use in a new application.  If you've ever curled ribbon for a present, you can do this.

Start with a flower cut out of cardstock. (It works best on flowers with long petals.) This flower is from the Walk in My Garden Cricut Cartridge.

Open up your scissors all the way and place your thumb on the blade.  (It's probably best not to use really sharp scissors.) Lifting up your thumb slightly, place the petal underneath your thumb (starting at the middle of the flower) and apply firm pressure with your thumb while pulling the petal across the blade towards the outer edge of the flower.  In this picture, you'd start in the center and pull the flower to the left with your left hand, while holding the scissors in your right hand.  If you're using patterned paper, make sure the pattern is facing down towards your scissors.  Repeat for all petals.

When you're done, you'll have a perfectly curly, perky flower. Yeh!

Before I learned this technique, I would have wrapped each petal around a pencil or other round object in order to curl it.  This is much faster and seemed to have more consistent results.

Then we punched small holes in the center of several flowers and layered them on a shish-kabob stick and placed a Rolo candy in the center of the flower.  If you made about a dozen of these it would look pretty in a vase. 

Thanks Lori!