Giving Dimension to Handmade Paper Embellishments

By Peg - March 21, 2015

I have been eagerly counting the days until spring arrived and it finally did yesterday. Unfortunately, we still have some snow in our forecast the next few days, but I've decided to welcome spring anyways by creating some beautiful tulips from handmade paper. These flowers can be used for window decorations or for magnets to brighten up your office space and bring a little touch of the season indoors.

I wanted the paper to be a really pale pastel color so I decided to mix things a little differently than I normally do. I first placed 2 pieces of Tissue Tints into the blender with 2 cups of water and blended it on high speed. See how rich the color is after it being blended? I love it, but it was too bright for what I had in mind so I used 8 strips of leftover white cardstock instead of colored cardstock to create the paper which gave me just the right hue for that.

I created 3 sheets of paper (1 pink, 1 yellow and 1 green) with this method using a Papermill Pro to create the paper. I allowed the paper to dry for several days before finishing it off with an iron.

Then, I drew the tulip pieces onto the sheets of paper. If you don't feel you can draw these yourself there are many good templates online to use to trace the pieces onto the sheets.

Now, form the petals, stems and leaves using a bowl of water and 2 small paintbrushes. You will want the brushes to be just barely damp. Too much water may cause the paper to tear when you are forming the pieces. Run the brush along the edge of the piece that you are working on. The further the water goes into the center the more area you will have to work with.

Lightly pinch and roll the edges of each piece. Go ahead and give them a little twist, too, but remember to be gentle doing it. Before you are completely done, add a line of water up the center of petal, leaf or stem and lightly pinch it the lengthwise.

See how much more dimension this gives to the paper compared to it being just being flat? Allow everything to dry completely and then use your favorite wet adhesive to glue the flowers together.

Add a magnet to the back of it and you have the perfect note holder for such things as your dry erase boards or your refrigerator. Where ever you need a little touch of spring these flowers are perfect to add there.

Use this idea to create your own embellishments for cards or on the books that you create using the bookmaking supplies from Arnold Grummer's! Add some metallics, sparkles or micas to add a little bling to your project.

As crafters, we are often looking for embellishments to add to our projects, but sometimes find ourselves in a dilemma because everything we have is just to flat for it so then we try things like 3-d adhesives. Better, but still flat. This is a great technique to use to add dimension to your embellishments that you have made yourself. Handmade paper is a great way to add a nice touch to anything and everything including your office space!