Welcome again to the continuing Back to School Tutorial Blitz! This tutorial will show you how to make those adorable "lollipop" style accordioned-paper flower/medallions that have been popping up everywhere, like the cover of the new 2011 Holiday Mini Catalog. Everyone seems to want to make that cute wreath, and now you can see how easy it will be using the new Simply Scored tool.
It also makes an adorable topper for the Blossom Box--click here to view.
Start with two 12-inch long strips of double-sided Designer Series Paper (DSP). How wide the strips are will depend on how wide across you would like your finished flower to be. For instance, a two-inch wide strip will give you a four-inch across flower. However wide your strip is, double that to get the finished width of the flower. My example strip here (made from the Flirtatious DSP) is 2 inches wide.
Score that on your nifty Simply Scored board every half inch all the way down the two strips.
Accordion-fold both strips up, and then join the two ends together with Sticky Strip (regular SNAIL will not hold under the stress this seam will be under.)
Then you're going to put some adhesive in the center to keep the flower laying flat like this. I have been using my hoard of discontinued Pop Up Glue Dots, but you can use Sticky Strip or Mini Glue Dots, too. I also use those to attach my punches or doilies and brads to embellish. I used the back side of the laser-cut doilies from the Flirtatious specialty DSP pack here, with the new In Color Printed Brads.
TIP: Look at the back side of this one! Didn't that turn out pretty? I used two identical strips cut from two sheets of the same DSP, so the halves turned out to be mirror-images of each other. If you want, though, you could imitate this effect with any papers by alternating six-inch strips of different DSP's instead of two long 12-inch strips.
Have fun--these are so fast and super fun to make, especially if you have a great scoring board like our new Simply Scored. Simply Scored is available beginning TODAY, September 1st, in the Holiday Mini Catalog! And I will be holding a special "Try It Tuesday event focusing just on scoring on Tuesday, November 29th, 2011--RSVP today!
Check back all this week for more of the Back To School Tutorial Blitz!
Really pretty Lyssa. Love how you've combined them with the doilies. Inky wishes, Di
Posted by: Di Barnes | 09/02/2011 at 06:02 AM
*confused* Not sure what you mean by "Then you're going to put some adhesive in the center to keep the flower laying flat like this." Can you explain? I'm having a hard time visualizing it . . . TIA!!!
Posted by: Jen Szmyd | 09/05/2011 at 06:55 PM
Jen, if you make one, you'll see what I mean when you get to this step. The accordion strip with the ends joined tends to want to be in a tall cylinder shape instead of laying flat like a disk. It was hard to describe : )
Posted by: Lyssa | 09/06/2011 at 01:45 PM
Wow, this is stunning and looks simple to make. Thank you for sharing this tutorial. Found you via a fb post.
Posted by: Gaylynn | 11/08/2011 at 09:05 PM