Iron Craft Challenge #11--May Flowers

Building up quite a selection

The challenge for this time up was RAIN or things that we would do on a rainy day. I felt right at home since the weather here has been cooperating. This wasn't the project that I had intended to do. I wanted to do a handmade puzzle and I had all of the materials needed to complete it but it just didn't work out. I will share that failure with you later in the week.

Instead, I decided to share two more flowers in my tissue flower series. These were made last night and I am building up my collection and techniques.

The difference with these flowers is that I decided to color then using homemade alcohol inks. The inks are made with rubbing alcohol and drops of ink from stamp pad re-inkers. I have a complete collection of Stampin Up ink pads and re-inkers from my days in rubber stamping (Caveat: I have not kept up with the new colors of pads/inks with Stampin Up since I haven't been stamping lately). I purchased the sets when I was using them to color the edges of my book blocks.

I also bought a ton of atomizers in which to make the alcohol inks.

Here is my storage tub of inks

The first attempt was to spray the completed flower with different shades of ink much like those edge colored carnations you see all of the time. While the effect is different, they turned out really well and the process  is quick. Although you lack the control normally associated with painting before forming the flower, I like that you get to see some of the original color of the tissue (white in this case) much more readily than when painting before.

Monochromatic Carnation

The second options was to paint the tissue before forming the flower. I decided to hand tear the edges and to vary the width of the layers. This flower I am calling a peony because that is what it looks like to me.

To prepare the sheets, I spread them out and overlapped them. I sprayed different layers of color on all of the sheets. I then separated the sheets and overlapped them again (exposing the white parts that weren't tinted on the first round) and layered color again. I then let them drying on top of each other. The beauty of alcohol inks is that they dry very quickly because the alcohol evaporates fast. You can even speed up the process by using a craft heat gun..

Tissue sheets drying.

I then assembled the sheets, tore the edges and formed the flower. This was done with 8 layers of tissue with the layers split into 2-3-3. This means the top layers are made from two sheets and are the narrowest. The middle layers are made with three sheets and are wider than the top layers but shorter than the bottom layers. The bottom layers are made from three sheets and are the widest.

Overall, I am very pleased with the peony. I like the way the edges add dimension and the purple color palette. Right now, I am just pinning the flower garden on the wall until I decide to do something artistic with them all. This way, they are up and away and prevented from getting damaged.