Tutorial Tuesday - Ric Rac Roses.

Hello lovely people, hope you are all having a fab start to your week! Welcome to Tutorial Tuesday where today, continuing on with the 'Hearts and Flowers' theme, I will be showing you how to create a ric rac rose - perfect for turning into a brooch, ring or necklace as a gift for Mother's Day!

You will need:

A length of ric rac - the longer the length, the bigger your rose (for the ring you will need approx 40cms of ric rac, folded over),

Hot glue and glue gun,

Long pin and cork-board or blu-tac (optional),

Sewing machine and thread (optional),

Felt circle, slightly smaller than your finished rose,

Jewellery components (Brooch Back, Ring Blank etc).

Step 1:

Fold your chosen ric rac in half. If it is easier you can pin the ric rac where it is folded to a cork board or piece of blu-tak while you are working...

...make sure where you fold it you have an 'up' next to a 'down' as you will be braiding it.

Step 2: 

Start braiding by placing an 'up' into a 'down', then bringing each piece of ric rac around from the back and over. You will need to pull tight and flatten the braid as you go because it will want to twist...

...keep going until you reach the ends...

Step 3:

Heat up your glue gun and put a dab of glue onto one end and press the other end into it. Cut any straggly pieces of the ends and then heat seal them with a flame (please be careful!) Pull your length of ric rac taught and flatten out.

If you like you can run a stitch through the length of ric rac using a sewing machine. I don't do this as I haven't found it necessary - the glue in the next step holds it together fine.

Step 4:

At the folded end, (not the glued end), put a teeny tiny dab of glue and fold back onto the length of ric rac...

...keep putting dabs of glue along the bottom edge of the ric rac length and rolling back...

...make sure you keep the rose level as you are rolling...

...when you get to the end put a dab of glue on it and fold underneath the rose...

...press it down to make sure it is flat...

Step 5:

Cut a circle of matching coloured felt, slightly smaller than the rose and hot glue it to the back...

...you can then hot glue the felt to your ring blank or attach a brooch back or glue a large jump ring to the back slightly sticking up - which you can attach to a necklace chain...

...I made some lovely festive brooches for my kids' teacher's gifts at Christmas...

...I just added an organza ribbon ruffle to them...

...and brooches / rings and necklaces as part of my Christmas swaps...

With the larger roses you can 'peel' the petals back a bit to give a more open look. With smaller ones I like to keep it closed as more of a rosebud look!

So voilà a pretty way to wear flowers! Have a go and see what you create!

I'm OK to blog about my exciting news now, but I think it deserves a full blog post so hopefully you will pop back tomorrow and share it with me!

Happy crafting!

xx