Not your grandmother's tissue flowers

I am still in the midst of playing around with tissue paper and making more tissue paper flowers. The idea is that I would love to do a piece of wall art that is framed in an acrylic box. Or to suspend them from the ceiling or make a mobile out of them. So many ideas.

I am changing the flowers by changing the  number of layers, how they are folded, how they are cut and how to tint/color the white tissue. In the future, I will move toward combining colored tissue with these painted layers and even painting the colored tissue.

Experiment #1--Coloring with ink pads

I thought that I could slide the ink pad across the tissue to implant color. Well, the color didn't transfer very well. If I used an up and down motion, I got better success. The coloring is very subtle because only one layer at a time gets the ink.

I don't hate the outcome but it is a little too subtle for me. 

Ink pad coloring

Experiment #2-- Carnation
I showed my version of the carnation in an earlier post that I did for the Iron Craft Challenge.  This time, I decided to use six layers of tissue of varying length. The top two layers were fringed and cut the shortest, the second two layers were an inch longer but were fringed as well (which was the difference from the previous attempt) and the last two were not cut but had their ends rounded.

I really liked the way that this turned out. The muted pastel colors I find very pleasing as well. I lost patience with separating the top four layers so next time I will cut them a little longer and I will start peeling the layers from the bottom which will work out a lot better, I think.

Carnation--second attempt

Experiment #3
This was an experiment with color and petals. I wanted to try and use more saturated color to see how strong the final product would look. While I really like the colors, I think that they might be a little too strong. The second part of the experiment was using 8 layers of tissue and making the top three layers very short and the second three layers a little bit shorter. For the top six layers, I hand tore the edges rather than cut them.

I like the fullness of the flower. What I started to realize is that when you reduce the bulk of the flower by shortening the top layers the flowers get a little too thin on top. So when removing bulk--use more layers, although I wouldn't use more than 8 layers.

Changing color and petal structure

Experiment #4--Changing colors and petal structures
I have to say that this is my most satisfying product. I like the colors and I like the way the final flower turned out in composition and form. This is an 8 layer flower as mentioned above. The top three layers were shortest and had hand torn edges. The second three layers were a little shorter and had their edges hand torn. The final two layers had their edges torn rather than cut.

I will have to say that this is my favorite.

My favorite