Daft For Daffodils (Plus A Tutorial!)

Hi Everyone!

I hope you're all keeping warm, I think this is the first day since last Thursday that it hasn't snowed (although it's early yet!)  I can't believe how much snow there has been - this was taken (not by me!) on Wednesday just up the road a bit:

Thankfully I wasn't too badly affected and we were able to celebrate my mum's 60th birthday on Wednesday night.

It's time for a new challenge at the Alphabet Challenge Blog and it's the last challenge for our lovely boss and leader Lesley :(  She's stepping down so she'll have more precious time for her.  But fear not!  The fabulous Shaz is taking over and I'm sure we'll be in safe hands!
Our lovely Caz had the task of choosing the challenge for the next fortnight and she chose...

D for Daffodils!

A lovely challenge, especially for this time of year, although our daffodils are buried under the snow!

Here's what I did:

I used this image not too long ago but I had to use her again for this challenge as she's just perfect!  She's called Flower Power Daffy by Digital Delights and I coloured her (slightly differently this time!) with the following copics:  Skin; E21,13,00,0000,R20. Hair; E77,59,57,55,53. Clothes; YG97,95,93,91,YR07,04,02,00.  Daffodils; Y19,17,15,13,11,G24,21,20.

The papers are Cosmo Cricket, Salt Air, but I thought the mermaid tails looked like daffodil leaves!
I cut the image out with a Spellbinder oval die and matted on a scalloped one.  The sentiment is by Pink Gem Designs and cut out with an X-cut die.  The little green pearls are from my stash and the lace is from The Ribbon Girl.

 The inside is done to match the front.

I also made a box to put the card into, so here's the set;

I was asked by one of my teamies to show how I made my daffodils, so here's a little tutorial.

First of all you need to make some small rolled roses by cutting out some circles (roughly 5 or 6cm diameter) and then cut them into a spiral.  I don't have any of the fancy dies for this so mine are all roughly cut, by hand (and scissors!).

Then, using a pair of tweezers, starting from the outside end of the spiral and curl around the tweezers.  I find if you curl it quite tightly to start with you can loosen it and it will keep a nice shape.  You need to loosen it a bit to remove the tweezers and then you can play with it to get the shape you want.  If I'm making roses, I will keep it quite tightly rolled, but for the daffodils I loosen it up a lot to keep the centre nice and open.

A good blob of glue will keep it nicely in place.  You only need to hold the paper together for a little while until the glue sets a bit, you don't need to hold it until it's completely dry - or this would take forever!

Once you've rolled the roses (or daffodil centres in this case!) you need to make some stamens.  I took a scrap of orange card and cut a thin strip - a couple of mm's wide and about 4cm long.  Fold it in half and then I grabbed an end with my tweezers and curled it around, removed the tweezers and squeezed between my fingers to make a wee curly nodule at the end.  Then simply push the folded end down into the glue in the centre of the roses (or if you haven't used as much glue as me, or it has dried a bit, add more glue down into the flower).  Leave to one side to dry.

For the next step I used a Spellbinder Dahlia die and used the third from smallest die to cut the outer part of the daffodil.  I then scored the die-cut from point to point (using a ruler and a scoring tool) and then folded along the score lines.  I then snipped in the valley between the score lines - to about half way from the outer edge to the centre.

Then, using a large ball tool and a cushioned  mat (mine is a promotional coaster someone left into work one time and it has a cushioned underneath!  Perfect for this as it's quite firm) I shaped each petal by running the ball around the edges of each one, using a fair amount of pressure.  After I did each petal I ran the ball in a large circle in the centre part to give the flower a better shape.  Lastly, for this stage, I nipped each petal closed along the fold line.

Nearly there now!
Using a good blob of glue, place the rolled roses into the middle of the petals.
Leave to dry for a few minutes.

Using another scrap, I cut (with my trimmer) some stems and leaves - the stems are about 4mm wide (and as long as you want) and the leaves start off at about 4mm wide and taper down to nothing.

Tip your flower up-side-down (making sure the glue has dried enough that it won't drip) and add a little drop to the back and attach one of your stems.
I'm adding my flowers to a card so I did the stems like this as it is flat and light-weight.  Another option that I think would be nice would be to paint a skewer green and attach it with a little bit of tan paper over the top of the skewer on the back of the flower, these would then be more sturdy and could be used on a different project!

Once all the glue has dried you can arrange your leaves and flowers on your project (make sure to put glue on the back of the flower head when attaching to your card as they are quite heavy) and trim the stems to length.
Here's my card again with my arrangement on it.

Phew!  That was a bit of a marathon!
If you give it a go, I'd love to see you enter the challenge at the Alphabet Challenge Blog!  Pop over and see what the rest of the DT have done too!

I'd like to enter my card in the following challenges:

Bunny Zoe's Challenge: Girly
Charisma Cardz Challenges; Happy Birthday
Digital Tuesday Challenge; Spring Colours
Fab N Funky Challenges; Boxed in
Forever Friends Fortnightly Challenge; Girls
Fussy & Fancy Challenge; Spring days
Kaboodle Doodles; Spring
Papercrafting Journey; Ribbon or lace
Scrappy Frogs Challenge; Luck O' The Irish
Sweetpea Stampers; Spring colours

Thanks for looking!