I found a sweet blue vase at Cost Plus World Market on clearance for just $3 last week.  I have a little thing for vases.  You may remember this one that I made for Marisol's bedroom.  I think the reason I love them so much is that you can fill them with all kinds of things, but especially beautiful flowers.  I always feel guilty though when I resort to buying fake flowers to fill them.  Of course I would much prefer to have real ones, which isn't always possible for every vase I have out on display, so for this one, I decided to make my own flowers.

handmade lace flowers

This idea came to me whilst I was looking at the new cushions I had made for the living room.  All of the vibrant colors, floral patterns and touches of lace on a couple of them.

I scoured the fabric bins at Beverlys and found a lovely off-cut of lace.  Then using what I had on hand at home set to work creating and re-creating (when I wasn't happy with sample after sample) a trio of flowers to place in the vase. 

lace and beaded flowers

To make these you will need:

  • Lace
  • Felt – to back the lace and also to make a green base under the flower
  • Wooden dowels
  • Foam balls
  • green and yellow paint
  • hot glue
  • regular glue (one that is strong enough to bond beads
  • assorted tiny beads
  • toothpicks

To make:

I used a leaf fondant cutter to make the shape for each petal, but if you can freehand it, by all means do. You need to cut out two pieces of lace and two pieces of felt for each petal.  Hand stitch them together and gently insert a toothpick through the center.

lace and felt flower tutorial

I found I needed to trim the end of each toothpick a little so I could fit each of the petals into the foam ball. 

First, I painted the bottom half of the foam ball in green and the top half in yellow.  I put a small line of hot glue around the middle and gently inserted each of the flower petals.  Next, I painted the wooden dowel green and again using hot glue inserted that into the base (green section) of the foam ball.  I then cut out a jagged green leaf from green felt, punched a hole in the center, pushed it to the base of the flower and using hot glue, secured it to the base of the foam ball and each of the petals to hold them in place.

Next, on the yellow portion of the foam ball, I brushed a glue (one that would dry clear and that would bond beads) over the entire area.  I then dipped that into a bowl of beads and gently poked extra beads into the spaces.

Leave to dry and add a coat of all purpose varnish if you need some extra help bonding it all together.

This post linked to:

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As seen on:

10marifet.org

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3 comments

Bridget Smith June 15, 2010 - 9:07 am

Gorgeous!!! Wish I were that talented. I always love your little craft projects

Reply
Kim @ seven thirty three June 17, 2010 - 6:18 am

Stunning. Thanks for the tut and for linking up with Sugar & Spice.

Reply
britt June 28, 2010 - 6:29 pm

I LOVE this!!

Reply

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