Organza Flowers

I keep seeing these beautiful button bouquets and handmade flowers but I hadn't yet seen a tutorial. Luckily, the other day I found Reese Dixon's tutorial on making Organza flowers and was super impressed. So last night, I went over to Hobby Lobby (which already has Christmas displays btw!) and got my supplies. I got a shimmery ivory organza and today, I picked up a yellow organza from JoAnne's. You can't really see much of a color difference in the picture but it's there! :)

Anyways, I ran into a few little problems while making the flowers. First off, I can't free-hand cut flowers from Organza with ease. And when I tried to make a little cutting guide, it kept sliding out of place. Luckily, the organza appears to be pretty forgiving once it's been melt and all put together. I've made two different flowers so far. The first, I used more of a starfish-flower pattern. This flower looks a little more island exotic to me than the second flower. I'm embarrassed to admit that the flower shape shown on left is one of the better ones I managed to cut!

For the second flower, I used more of a circle shape with small petals. I think I like it more because it seems more 'English Garden' like. For this flower, I just cut out 6 squares all the same size (roughly). I lined them up as best I could and cut away. Organza is slippery!

I had a bit of a Goldilocks issue with my candles. The flame on the left was too small and the flame on the right was too hot. So I had to choose between holding the organza forever to coax it into melting OR hold it briefly and then cut off the portions that turned black from burning. Yeah. I went with the small flame but it seriously tried my patience. I'm not making any more until I have another candle! :) I'm thinking the one candle is just so old that the wick is burnt down and the other is cheap.

So anyways, for each flower, I mainly used the ivory organza with only one yellow layer. I might swing by JoAnne's and pick up some green organza to play with as well. My beads were yellow and green. Sewing them on was very simple.

I had originally been imagining that I'd make my bouquet, a boutennere, bridesmaids bouquets and maybe a pomodar for the flower girl but now? I don't know if I have the patience for that! I still want to make about 10 more though so I could get an idea of whether they'd look good as a bouquet.