Floral Tribute

 I found this photograph of my Granny and her big sister last week and thought I would like to make something special for them, sadly they are both gone now but I would like to put this photo up anyway.
Sizzix die - Tattered Flower Garland,  Spellbinder die - Foliage,  Distress Inks - Scattered Straw, Wild Honey, Rusty Hinge, Aged Mahogany, Brushed Corduroy, Old Paper and Forest Moss,  Archival Ink - Coffee,Cosmic Shimmer Glue - dries clear,  Foundations Card - coconut white.  Floral stamp - from Chocolate Baroque.

 The frame began life as a plain brown papier mache item crying out to be decorated. I began this process by stamping with Archival Coffee and a floral stamp from my stash. The beauty of this stamp is it's a random pattern making it easy to match up over a large area and it's not mounted onto anything, not even U-Mount, so it flexes to the shape of the item you are stamping, you can quite literally stamp round corners!
I covered the whole frame with this image because I liked it so much.

 Then I die cut four of every flower shape I wanted to use so that I could build my roses, Granny loved roses. The flower tutorial can be found on this link. All four sizes are on the Tattered Flower Garland die from Sizzix, they are smaller versions of the flowers found on the Bigz die Tattered Florals and the leaves on Tattered Leaves. Now you can make lots of different sized flowers that all look like they are from the same plant, it's great.

Colour your flowers before assembly, you could use coloured card to begin with but I chose to play with Distress Inks because I love them so much. Starting on the left hand side the colours are as follows.... Rusty Hinge edged with Aged Mahogany,  Wild Honey edged with Rusty Hinge,  Wild Honey no edging, Old Paper edged with Brushed Corduroy and Scattered Straw no edging.

 Here they are all made up and ready to glue on the frame. I also cut out some leaves from green card with a Spellbinder die - Foliage. While the shape was still in the die I inked the exposed areas with Forest Moss to darken them.

I put the flowers on the frame in several different positions before gluing to see where they looked best. Once happy with the layout I stuck them all on with Cosmic Shimmer dries clear glue, it's a very strong PVA glue that I have found very useful and it dries quite quickly too.
I made the frame with the flower cluster at the top left so that if I decide to change the picture it will also stand portrait without looking odd as the flowers will then be at the bottom.
I hope you will try using your paper craft skills for projects other than cards, there's so much possibility, start now for Christmas presents!