Rose Tutorial

To make a rose with the Cheery Lynn Build a Flower #2 die set you will need some basic equipment.  You will need a foam embossing pad, a pointed tool, an embossing ball tool, and a pair of tweezers.  I have used some reverse action tweezers but any will do.  You will also need to use a fairly fast drying glue.  

You will need to cut out 14-16 petals in whatever colour you wish. I have used a photocopy grade paper for these.  You can use a lightweight card as well, but I don't think a textured card looks right.  

 I have used the largest size die here for purposes of making it easier to photograph, and it is quite a good idea to try making a bigger one to start with, then you can move to smaller ones which are more fiddly. You will also need something to attach the bottom set of petals to, I have used just a 5/8" circle punch, but if you have a 5 part snowflake punch or a calyx shaped punch, then that will work as well.  

Next  you need to cut the little piece off the bottom of each petal.  If you don't do this, the rose will be a lot higher.

With your ball embossing tool and a foam embossing pad, emboss each petal by rolling the tool around over the petal to stretch the fibres, which makes it more supple for shaping.  

The next thing to do, is to make a bend in the middle of each petal with the tweezers.

Now curl each side of the top of the petal downward with the pointed tool.  Just curl it under a little on both sides on all the petals except with one petal, which you only need to curl only one side.

This will be the petal you curl up to make the centre of the rose.  

The first petal you need to roll up with the tweezers and glue it but leave a little curl at the end unglued.

 

Next you need to pop some glue at the bottom centre of another petal and wrap this around the first one and hold for a few seconds for the glue to dry a little.  Set aside for a few minutes while you make the bottom set of petals so that it can dry a little.

The next thing to do, is to make the bottom set.  This you do by putting a little dab of glue on the back of 5 petals at the very bottom centre and glue each petal onto the circle or whatever you are using, overlapping the petal before a little, until you go right around and tuck the last petal edge under the first one you glued.  It should look like the one above.  Now set this aside to dry.

You can now go back to the first petals and put a glue dab into the bottom front of another petal, and wrap it around the first one going the opposite way.  This means that the central part of the petal should wrap around the opening of the one before.

Now glue three more petals around these, overlapping the edges of the petals slightly, letting them sit quite loosely. 

You should glue another 3 or 4 more petals loosely, depending on how they go, so that they look symmetrical.  This is the centre of your rose.  Set this aside. 

If the bottom petals have dried, then put it on the embossing mat, and press the centre down with the ball tool to cup the petals upwards slightly.  You have to press this quite hard.  Another way of doing this, is to put it onto a roll of 'sellotape' and press the centre down so that it goes down into the centre well of the roll a little and the petals close up slightly.   

Put a blob of glue into the centre and then you can glue the centre rose into this. 

Sometimes depending on how loosely the petals have glued, you may need to glue a couple of petals between the centre rose part and the bottom set of petals to fill in any gaps.  You usually only need to do a couple, sometimes you don't need to do any. 

This is how it will look.  As you can see, each one turns out slightly different, but that is fine, real roses are all different too.  The second one is slightly tighter than the first.  

Here is the size above and one made with the smallest petal size on the die set.  The smaller size is what I used for the Pink Ribbon card.  

Have fun making them, with practice I am sure you will be impressed with them.