Tutorial: Simple Dahlias

Whew!  I'm still recovering from National Scrapbook Day!  I had a wonderful time.  I scrapped continuously from 5:00 AM to 8:00 PM.  Thank you so much to Steve for making it possible for me to spend all day celebrating NSD.  I can't wait until next year! 

My goal for the day was to complete as many of the challenges at scrapbook.com and Fiskateers as possible.  The two online crops were very different.  At scrapbook.com, there were five timed challenges.  One was a cardmaking challenge and four were layout challenges.  There was also an all-day challenge about photo organization, plus a week-long mini-book challenge.  I finished all five timed challenges and the all-day challenge. It was definitely challenging!  I'll be showing you what I made over the next few weeks.   

There were 15 Fiskateer challenges, of which 10 involved making something.  The challenges were not timed and could be done in any order.  The first one I did was to make a homemade flower embellishment.  I don't use a lot of flowers in my scrapping and I almost never make my own, so I decided to find a tutorial and use the challenge as an opportunity to learn something new.  I knew exactly where to go: Scrap a Little.  Helen Croft has 26 different flower tutorials there!  I chose her Simple Dahlia Tutorial.  To be honest, I was drawn by the word simple.  That sounded like the right one for me! 

They really were quite easy to make.  I emailed Helen and asked permission to do my own version of her tutorial here.  She graciously agreed.

Step 1: Select a piece of double-sided patterned paper.  Punch 6 circles. (Please excuse the photos.  It was still dark at 5:00 AM when I did these, so the picture quality is not the best.)

  Step 2: Fold five of the circles to form points, as shown below.

Step 3: Using the unfolded circle as a base, arrange the folded circles so that the folded parts touch.  I needed to adjust my folds slightly to make them line up correctly.

Step 4: When everything lines up nicely, glue them in place.  I added a brad to the center of my flower and rubbed a bit of Stickles over all the petals.  Easy and really cute!

Tomorrow I'll show you another homemade flower from a Fiskateer challenge!