Thursday, January 31, 2013

3d Crystal Lacquer Book Page Flower

Finished Flower arrangement
At CHA I saw a chandelier that was embellished with resin paper leaves. I love that idea so I made a book page flower with 3d Crystal Lacquer.

Supplies:
Book Pages
3d Crystal Lacquer
Copper wire- I picked mine up in a large spool from home depot. I think it is called welding wire.
Transparent tape (like scotch tape)



Close up of flowers
 Directions:
Cut off about a 6-12" length of wire (this depends on how big you want your leaves and total arrangement to be). I wanted mine to have about 3" leaves so I cut off 12" and then i trimmed it off later. Make about 3-4 leaves, so that is 3-4 pieces of 6-12" wire.
Copper wire with top looped to make a leaf
Loop the top 4" around and twist it around the stem. You will need to shape your wire to form a leaf.

Tape the leaf down to the book page. You may want to find special words or sentences to highlight. You want to make sure that your wire lays flat on the paper or the 3d Crystal lacquer will seep under the wire. This may take some bending. You don't really need to worry about the tape because it is almost invisible after you lacquer the paper. I just overlap a little tape over the inside of the leaf.
Taped down wire. 

 Now you can create your flower. You can create individual petals and wire them together or attempt one big flower. I was getting tired of making leaves so i wanted to knock out one big flower. Most of the wire molding can be done by hand but I did have to pull out the pliers to wrap the inside of the flower. I left the wire on the spool while I make the flower, because I had no idea how much wire it would take.
Doesn't look perfect, but I can adjust it more later.
Tape the flower down to the book pages too.
Notice my flower already looks a little better.

 Now you can start filling in the 3d Crystal Lacquer. It is ok if there is a little seeping, because you can trim that off later, when we cut out the designs. We just don't want a lot of seep out. I actually had minimal seeping.



Once dry, flip the design over and lacquer the back.

Now you can cut out your designs.
I used an exacto to get into small areas.

Your flower and leaves are now done and you can arrange them however you want. You could make a garland, earrings, ornaments, whatever! I think a butterfly would be cute! You could even add some of the mixers to the lacquer for added color.



Tanya

Tanya Ruffin





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