Floral Punch Craft - Azaleas & Camellias.

I've been spoilt over the past couple of weeks. Firstly I had a full day of Floral Punch Craft classes, followed by a half day nearly 2 weeks later. All classes were held by Jane Gill at The Glitterpot - a more passionate lady about the art, and art it is, you couldn't wish to find.

The morning of the first day was taken up with azaleas. No card was made but we got to make 2 azaleas and a stem of leaves to go with. I've not yet put them together on a card but I am more than pleased with the end result. The azaleas were made by punching 10 large balloon shapes from 80gsm copier paper and then trimming to shape. The paper was coloured with a wash made from Marvy pens scribbled on a tile and mixed with water. Artistic licence can come into play here - lol!! The shapes were then stuck to a strip of the same, uncoloured paper and rolled up - voilá ... flower made! Quite fiddly and I had to do a rescue job on both of mine - Tip: it's best to allow the glue to dry thoroughly before rolling up ..... LOL!!

The leaf stem was made using punched shapes of medium, small and mini birch leaves from green paper, trimmed to remove the serrated edge, and then stuck to a strip of the same paper.

Here are my finished azaleas and what surprised me - they are different colours but both were coloured from the same Marvy pen. One is pink and one is more lilac, which was the colour of the pen. The only reason I can think of is that I used different quantities of water in my wash.

Camellias were made in the afternoon. Thoroughly enjoyed this one. Well, I enjoy them all but I found this one really relaxing even though it involved shaping and sticking 128 individual daisy petals - lol! The camellia made was a 'Brushfields Yellow' although we made it out of cream paper - lol!! (Google the flower in Google Images and see the likeness!) It was made from 10 large balloons trimmed to shape, 16 daisy's (8x16=128!) with a large flower and medium circle for the base shapes. If you take a look at the flower you can see which shapes are which. I found it quite therapeutic sticking all 128 individual petals into a big pile of silicone glue .... LOL! The leaves were the super, giant birch leaf punch with the serrated edges trimmed away. To get the gloss they were painted with a brush on thick gloss glaze by DecoArt.

We were supposed to make a card using this flower but, although I cut and decorated the card, I'm not really too keen on oriental so I chose not to add the camellia to it. I'm sure I can use the card in another way and make a totally different card from the camellia. I can see me definitely making more of these flowers ....

I learnt a lot from these 2 classes. Firstly, I'd never coloured paper from scratch for my flowers before and I can ruin absolutely anything by just showing it a paint brush - usually!! As I coloured each petal for the azaleas my technique(?) improved and I was really pleased with the end result. In the camellia class we cut our own card from a template, distressed it and used a stamp positioner. A very, very productive day with beautiful flowers at the end of it.

Details of both flowers and many more, can be found in Leone Em's Floral Punch Craft VIII available from The Glitterpot and Centagraph

(Click on any image to enlarge for more detail)

Enjoy!!