Tattered Flowers

This is my entry for the Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Challenge.

I used cream burlap, canvas, organza, Spun Sugar and Victorian Velvet Distress Paint, Rock Candy Glitter, Glossy Accents and an Ideaology button.

First I pounced some Distress paint on the fabrics, then I spritzed them with water and scrunched them up.  The scrunching mixed the paints and squeezed excess water and paint out of the fabrics. I have three fabrics here, but I did not paint the organza, the very pink fabric below is white crinoline that I used with the organza to make flowers for something else.  The crinoline is what is pictured in all of the steps below.

Then I started drying them while they were scrunched.

It is basically the same drying technique you use when drying the seam binding ribbon to tie on the top of tags.  I slowly unscrunched and rescrunched until the fabric was dry and crinkley.

Pictured on the left is the cream burlap, the center is the cream canvas, and on the right is the white crinoline.  I ended up not being able to use them together because even though I used the same exact paint mixture of Victorian Velvet and Spun Sugar, the difference between the base colors of white and cream really made a difference in the outcome.

Then I ironed the burlap onto some paper-backed fusible web.  I find that this helps the burlap keep it's shape.  I love the texture of the burlap, but am a little different than Tim in that I don't like when it frays so much that it loses it's shape.

Then I cut all of the fabrics out of the Tattered Florals die.  I layered them and put one stitch in the center to hold the layers together.

In a separate little metal lid, I mixed Glossy Accents and Rock Candy Glitter to make my own stickles. Then I brushed it on the tips of the flower layers and dried them one at a time with the heat gun.  At the end I spritzed it with water and dried it and the heat caused it to curl up.

My last thing was to take one of the idealogy buttons and put some Antique Linen and Spun Sugar Distress Paints on the button and then wipe off the excess leaving a little color in the crevices.

I love this flower!  It fits perfectly on some painted thrifts store books that I used for my Valentine and Spring decor this year.