Graphic45 Flower

I am working on a new mini using the Graphic45 Le' Romantique line of papers. I wanted to show you how I designed one of the flowers that I am going to put on the cover. The cover is about half way completed.

When I am playing around with my Cricut and trying different ideas, I learned the hard way to cut everything out on plain printer paper first to make sure that I like it before cutting up my expensive scrap paper!

Once I find the sizes and shapes I like, I cut them out with the good paper. I used flowers from the Graphically Speaking cartridge and Plantin Schoolbook Cartridge. If you don't have a Cricut, you can still do this. You can use punches or print flower patterns from the internet to cut and trace onto scrap paper. In the future I am even going to try to draw some flowers free hand. I think that would be a pretty unique look!

Next I take each piece and distress them. I used Tim Holtz distress ink in Vintage Photo, and a Making Memories tool to rough up the edges a little.

Then I used an old embossing tool to curl the petals. You could use a toothpick or anything else handy.

For one of the flowers, I folded the petals in half length wise for some variety.

Voila!

Here's a sneak peak at my unfinished cover: