Technique Tuesday

Over at Club CK, we are going to start doing Technique Tuesday.  Every week, a member will share a technique that she developed or found.  It'll be a fun way to share different scrappy things.

I came across a tutorial on making Ric Rac flowers over at Skrap 'n Chat.  I loved how they looked so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  I have to admit that the first one was really tricky and I had to start over about three times.

What do you need for the flowers?
* Hot glue gun
* Circle (mine was 2" for the first one; the smaller the circle, the tougher to wrap)
* A lot of ric rac
* Something to finish off the flower - button, brad, paper circle, etc.

Here are my tips before starting:

* Use ric rac that isn't too stiff.  For the first flower I did, I used bigger ric rac and it was pretty stiff.  It made it tough to wrap it tight.  

* Use just a little glue at a time.  I found it better to just squirt a bit at a time and then wrap slowly.  That way you can get the ric rac more even and avoid gaps.  

*  You don't want the ric rac straight up or flat so you need to play around a bit with how you want it.

Step 1:  Squirt some glue in the centre of the circle.

Step 2:  Start wrapping the ric rac from centre.  Keep it tight to start.   Keep the "v"s tight at the bottom.  

Step 3:  Just keep wrapping it around.  Try to do it tight enough to not have gaps but not too tight or it will get quite thick.

Here's what it looks like as you're going:

Step 4:  When you've finished, just trim the ric rac and then trim the cardstock back so you don't see it.

Step 5:  Finish it off with a button or brad.

The flower on the right was my first one.  You can see it's standing up more than the one on the left.