Rolled Paper Flowers Adventure

So, I noticed a trend in digital scrapbooking again. It's been a while since I've noticed the trend. I started two Facebook discussion on it and you can read more there and even see some links I share to kits containing rolled paper flowers (unless you read this months from now and they are buried!)

So, I decided to go on a little adventure to see if I could make them myself. I found these two videos which were very helpful.









I decided to go with a solid green paper because I wasn't sure if printed scrapbook paper was copyright friendly. My thought is to be sure you are copyright friendly, one could make their own paper digitally and print it out and use that paper. Yes, this is already getting complicated.

I did not draw a line, but just started at it with my scissors and tried to do the wavy line as in the one video. I did find that when rolling, the suggestion in the one video to focus on the inner edge and lining it up helped. My circle turned out to be kind of an oval instead. I wondered what that would do to my results.

At first I didn't have a roll going, but rather a flat fold, so I decided to try the suggestion in the one video to try to crumple the paper first before rolling. That just led to more of a disaster as I saw the paper was torn while rolling. Oh, am I having fun yet? Um, keep reading.



I couldn't find my bottle of craft glue in the desk and did not feel like running downstairs to dig in my craft supplies, so I grabbed my "from-about-1984-classic-it-should-not-be-working-anymore" glue gun. Do you think I should invest in a new one?


After crumpling the edges down, I decided that rolling the paper so the color of the paper is on the outside as shown in the video was not the best choice for digital scrapbooking element making. My green element (to match my son and daughter-in-law's recent wedding flowers) was all white when looking down on the center.

So this time, I actually drew the spiral so my cutting would not result in an oval and rolled the flower up so the color was on the inside.


I glued it together and began laughing out loud! My poor flower was like some "awkwardly-built-before-technology-and-machinery-tall-spiral" building from an early time period.

I was beginning to be reminded as to why I digital scrapbook and do not paper scrapbook! This hand crafting stuff is just not in my artistic ability scope!


So I unrolled it and tried to roll it up a bit looser this time. My fingers were cramping when I was initially rolling, so maybe I was a little bit to strong when rolling. As you can see, it didn't help to flatten my flower at all!

So I went looking for my rubber mallet that my Dad gave me before leaving home for college. It wasn't in my toolbox! Now this is a problem I've always had! My men just won't leave MY toolbox alone! They all have their own, but because mine is always put away as it should be, they come and get my tools and they disappear. They were mine from my Dad and are special to me (especially since he passed away) and I don't want them getting mixed up with all new tools. Now I'm going to have to go on one of those blasted all-point-bulletins and no-one-is-happy-unless-mom-is-happy rants until I get my rubber mallet back! Great. Life with men.


So I got my hammer out. Yes, this hammer was given to me by Dad, complete with electrical tape to hold the splitting handle together, and has been the most used hammer in the entire house, still going strong. This in a garage sale would be someone else's junk, but it's my treasure! There's a great analogy and lesson in there about life somewhere.

Anyway, back to the story, I hammered the bajeezies out of my flower and it didn't do one thing to it! Goodness, these flowers are strong! There must be another analogy and life lesson in there about how people tightly rolled together make for a stronger unity.



So I turned the flower over and hammered right on the top of it.
Still didn't do anything to it! Man! Was I laughing at myself so hard now.
It was a good thing I was alone in the house doing this to my rolled paper flowers.


So, I tried to extract photos of the flowers anyway, even though the actual flowers were horrible results.

I quickly was reminded how hard it is to get good clear photos (or scans) of elements with depth to them. One part of the flower is clear and the other is not.

I saw some Photoshop videos recently (don't remember where they are) with the new CS5 and it's ability to merge (like HDR) 3 or more photos with varying depth of field and it made me think of how useful that would be in making CU elements (commercial use) for sale.

I really do need and want to get that macro lens I've been dreaming of and I'm not sure how long I can hold out, especially after today's experience!

I'm sharing them anyway, even though the quality is yucky to me in more ways than one! Maybe people who aren't so picky will find them useful. Please know if I were selling, I would not sell these!

Download here for a limited time, then always in my subscriber area.

And if you've read this far, I sure hope you haven't laughed at me too much!

I think I'm sticking to digital scrapbooking and not going back to traditional paper scrapbooking!