Pop-up Flower Tutorial with Tonya

Tonya here with my first Guest Designer post for Samantha Walker Designs.  

I am excited to share my ideas and projects with you.   

While looking at other crafter's blogs, I came across a flower pop up card, and thought to myself - 'I would love to be able to make that!'  As I scrolled through the post, I saw the picture of a lily version.  Lilies remind me of my parents.  Lilies are my mother's favorite flower; and my daddy used to send Easter Lilies to me and my sisters every Spring, before his passing in '98.  I knew I wanted to try my hand at a lily version, of my own. 

The instructions in the post show how to cut an 8 petal flower with a die cut machine (she provides a free file), then hand cut to make a 7 petal flower.  Her file provides a rounded petal flower...and I wanted a lily like flower.  I figured I could create a file with my Silhouette software to fit what I wanted.  

With that in mind, I headed to the Silhouette Store to look through Samantha's files.  I did not find a flower file that perfectly suited my needs.  So I thought I could adapt/create one. 

 Samantha's Lattice Flower Circle file (#23491)  worked nicely as a starting point. 

I created an internal offset for the flower outline.  To do this, I highlighted the image and clicked on the offset icon (upper right).  I put the offset distance as 0.150.  This created a more pointed flower petal (closer to a lily petal) and moved the offset away from the image so that it was easier for me to drag it away from the base cut file. 

   

 Next, I moved the offset away from the base file, and deleted the original image. 

  

For the flower, I needed 7 petals, and this one had 8.  I used the knife tool to cut away one petal.  I lined up my curser so that the crossbars were centered between the top and side petals to find the midpoint of the flower, and 'cut' from the center out.

 Next, I created score lines between the petals for folding.  I used the same method as the knife tool above, drawing dashed lines from the center out between each petal.    

To keep the pieces together, I highlighted all the parts and grouped them. 

Since these were to be lilies, I needed some stamens.  I used a stamen (top) from Samantha's Hawaiian Hisbiscus Flowers (#4170).  

All I needed to do was duplicate the flowers to the number needed for the card (7 total), and size the stamens accordingly. 

*Note* - there are 14 stamens in my file, instead of 7.  This is just in case a couple do not cut cleanly or I make a mistake/rip one while embellishing the stamens.  

The stamens are not yellow in the original file.  I tend to 'color' my pieces so when I cut them out, I have a visual reference. 

Here are my flowers - one assembled (center) and 6 unfinished.  The flowers were dry embossed for detail.  I cut the stamens out of the same white cardstock as the flowers.  They were colored with a Wild Honey Distress Marker mixed with water and highlighted with yellow Stickles. 

Supplies: Samantha Walker Silhouette files #23491 & #4170, Silhouette Cameo, Recollections Cardstock, Distress Marker, Stickles, Paper Studio Embossing Folder, Sizzix Texture Boutique