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Kanzashi!
I got a jar of Nori paste, which is a rice-starch paste and what is traditionally used to make kanzashi with. It's better than hot glue, because it's slow-drying (I think it takes 24-48 hours to *completely* dry), which means you can invest some time in adjusting the petals of the flowers before the Point of No Return, and that it's easier to wash off things like your skin, like when you happen to accidentally hot-glue things to your body. (And no burns from hot glue! Which I haven't done in a long time, but have done quite painfully in the past.)
There's instructions for making it yourself online, and if money is an issue, that's the way to go, as you can buy rice flour in bulk from health-food stores and Central Market. OTOH, if you're me and far lazier than that, you can find yourself a bookbinding or archival supply house like Hollander's and drop $8.95 on a 10-ounce jar of Nori, a brand of rice-starch paste. :) It's used in restoring paper and documents.
You use it in kanzashi-making by spreading a thick layer on a wooden board, then placing the folded petals in it for a while before assembling them into the flower. Experimentation is starting to show that I need to let them sit there for a while so that the paste will get tacky, and it'll be easier to assemble.
The almost-final results:
They're not attached to anything yet because they're still drying. I don't have any sort of rack to hold them yet. The book I got from Japan shows a wood box with a tall lip that has holes drilled in it so you can stick the wires in there while they dry, but I haven't worked out how to make/get one yet. I think I need stiffer wire before I do that - the floral wire I'm using at the moment bends too easily to support a wire that long, I think.
The black flower has a white plastic button with a shiny thing in the middle. It needed something big, as the hole in the middle where they met was big and a bit ragged. I think that particular button doesn't look particularly nice, but oh well. The peach flower has a silver bead cap (I think gold would have looked better, but I didn't have any gold) and a green plastic pearl.
I've seen a kanzashi somewhere online that used Swarovski crystals to mimic dewdrops on the petals, which might be pretty. Once I get better at this, I think I'll try that.
The backs of the flowers. My camera did a really good job of focusing on the Nori paste jar, which I didn't notice til after I downloaded the pictures.
I'm doing what the book says (or says in pictures: the text is all Japanese, which I don't read. But it's quite thoroughly illustrated) - cut out cardstock circles and cover them with matching fabric. They don't yet look *great*, but they're getting much better than my previous tries. :D When I do the sort of flower on the left again, I need to make a bigger base, I think, to look good. The one on the right needs a small one because the ability to see through the petals' centers adds to its look.
The Nori paste is supposed to dry clear, which will help (a) stop the fraying on the cut edges and (b) the look, as right now you can see small clumps of it. :D
I hot-glued the center decorations on, which should help hold the petals on the base as well.
Side view. You can see a bit of fraying. Once the paste dries I'll snip off the extra strands.
And now the work surface with supplies!
1. Laptop, for looking up other kanzashi for inspiration and re-watching the tutorial videos when you forget how to do something.
2. Can of spray starch. Starch the hell out of the fabric before you cut it into squares. So far I've been giving it 2 or 3 good soakings, letting it dry a little bit to soak into the fabric, and ironing it crisp and flat.
3. Fat quarters! The Cabbage Rose quilting shop was a quilters' paradise, and full of fabrics in bolts and fat quarters. And it's a five-minute drive from my apartment!
4. The jar of Nori paste. It says to refrigerate to make it last longer, so it's living in the fridge now.
5. Paper towels for wiping Nori paste off fingers, clothes, tweezers, the cat, and every other surface it comes in contact with.
6. A leftover something from the Yuuko box. You'll learn about it later.
7. Coasters. Not strictly necessary for the process, unless you're OK with going thirsty or marking up your brand-new coffee table. :)
8. Glue gun, for gluing the fabric onto the bases, and the centers onto the flowers.
9. Pins for keeping petals semi-neatly folded. Which I completely forgot to use.
10. Hair-straightening iron. My cheap-ass iron. :) I really like how it works, though, and may reserve this for kanzashi and get another one for my hair.
11. Needle-nose pliers for bending floral wire.
12. Mostly-hidden sewing scissors reserved for fabric ONLY to preserve their edge.
13. Crappy scissors for cutting cardstock circles.
14. Wire cutters for cutting floral wire.
15. Pen for drawing circles on cardstock, since I can't find a pencil that I don't want to reserve for art class at the moment.
16. Tweezers for holding and manipulating fabric petals. The book shows them used to fold, but I'm not very good at that yet.
17. Cheap, small cutting board reserved for this.
18. Thick layer of Nori paste, plus an extra petal in case I screwed one of the others up.
19. Plastic knife for spreading Nori paste.
20. Cardstock left over from Yuuko box for making bases.
21. Mostly-hidden rotary cutter. Necessary for cutting perfect squares of starched cloth if you're as bad at wielding scissors as I am.
22. Self-healing cutting mat.
23. Spoon! For eating ice cream with.
24. Japanese book of kanzashi-makins. Close-up view of the pages the book is open to. That's my phone and a bag of bead caps sitting on it.
25. Envelope from the Receipt Club at the Cabbage Rose Quilting Shop - if you collect $400 worth of receipts, you get a $40 shopping spree. :D
26. Conte crayons from the art supplies section of the craft store that I really need to get with the rest of my art supplies.
27. Cat toy, to distract cat from kanzashi.
28. All the way back to the right - this number could refer to the paintbrush I didn't use at all. (I'd gotten it to dab Fray-Check on if needed.) Or it could refer to the invisible length of floral wire that vanished into the table grain in the photo.
There's instructions for making it yourself online, and if money is an issue, that's the way to go, as you can buy rice flour in bulk from health-food stores and Central Market. OTOH, if you're me and far lazier than that, you can find yourself a bookbinding or archival supply house like Hollander's and drop $8.95 on a 10-ounce jar of Nori, a brand of rice-starch paste. :) It's used in restoring paper and documents.
You use it in kanzashi-making by spreading a thick layer on a wooden board, then placing the folded petals in it for a while before assembling them into the flower. Experimentation is starting to show that I need to let them sit there for a while so that the paste will get tacky, and it'll be easier to assemble.
The almost-final results:
They're not attached to anything yet because they're still drying. I don't have any sort of rack to hold them yet. The book I got from Japan shows a wood box with a tall lip that has holes drilled in it so you can stick the wires in there while they dry, but I haven't worked out how to make/get one yet. I think I need stiffer wire before I do that - the floral wire I'm using at the moment bends too easily to support a wire that long, I think.
The black flower has a white plastic button with a shiny thing in the middle. It needed something big, as the hole in the middle where they met was big and a bit ragged. I think that particular button doesn't look particularly nice, but oh well. The peach flower has a silver bead cap (I think gold would have looked better, but I didn't have any gold) and a green plastic pearl.
I've seen a kanzashi somewhere online that used Swarovski crystals to mimic dewdrops on the petals, which might be pretty. Once I get better at this, I think I'll try that.
The backs of the flowers. My camera did a really good job of focusing on the Nori paste jar, which I didn't notice til after I downloaded the pictures.
I'm doing what the book says (or says in pictures: the text is all Japanese, which I don't read. But it's quite thoroughly illustrated) - cut out cardstock circles and cover them with matching fabric. They don't yet look *great*, but they're getting much better than my previous tries. :D When I do the sort of flower on the left again, I need to make a bigger base, I think, to look good. The one on the right needs a small one because the ability to see through the petals' centers adds to its look.
The Nori paste is supposed to dry clear, which will help (a) stop the fraying on the cut edges and (b) the look, as right now you can see small clumps of it. :D
I hot-glued the center decorations on, which should help hold the petals on the base as well.
Side view. You can see a bit of fraying. Once the paste dries I'll snip off the extra strands.
And now the work surface with supplies!
1. Laptop, for looking up other kanzashi for inspiration and re-watching the tutorial videos when you forget how to do something.
2. Can of spray starch. Starch the hell out of the fabric before you cut it into squares. So far I've been giving it 2 or 3 good soakings, letting it dry a little bit to soak into the fabric, and ironing it crisp and flat.
3. Fat quarters! The Cabbage Rose quilting shop was a quilters' paradise, and full of fabrics in bolts and fat quarters. And it's a five-minute drive from my apartment!
4. The jar of Nori paste. It says to refrigerate to make it last longer, so it's living in the fridge now.
5. Paper towels for wiping Nori paste off fingers, clothes, tweezers, the cat, and every other surface it comes in contact with.
6. A leftover something from the Yuuko box. You'll learn about it later.
7. Coasters. Not strictly necessary for the process, unless you're OK with going thirsty or marking up your brand-new coffee table. :)
8. Glue gun, for gluing the fabric onto the bases, and the centers onto the flowers.
9. Pins for keeping petals semi-neatly folded. Which I completely forgot to use.
10. Hair-straightening iron. My cheap-ass iron. :) I really like how it works, though, and may reserve this for kanzashi and get another one for my hair.
11. Needle-nose pliers for bending floral wire.
12. Mostly-hidden sewing scissors reserved for fabric ONLY to preserve their edge.
13. Crappy scissors for cutting cardstock circles.
14. Wire cutters for cutting floral wire.
15. Pen for drawing circles on cardstock, since I can't find a pencil that I don't want to reserve for art class at the moment.
16. Tweezers for holding and manipulating fabric petals. The book shows them used to fold, but I'm not very good at that yet.
17. Cheap, small cutting board reserved for this.
18. Thick layer of Nori paste, plus an extra petal in case I screwed one of the others up.
19. Plastic knife for spreading Nori paste.
20. Cardstock left over from Yuuko box for making bases.
21. Mostly-hidden rotary cutter. Necessary for cutting perfect squares of starched cloth if you're as bad at wielding scissors as I am.
22. Self-healing cutting mat.
23. Spoon! For eating ice cream with.
24. Japanese book of kanzashi-makins. Close-up view of the pages the book is open to. That's my phone and a bag of bead caps sitting on it.
25. Envelope from the Receipt Club at the Cabbage Rose Quilting Shop - if you collect $400 worth of receipts, you get a $40 shopping spree. :D
26. Conte crayons from the art supplies section of the craft store that I really need to get with the rest of my art supplies.
27. Cat toy, to distract cat from kanzashi.
28. All the way back to the right - this number could refer to the paintbrush I didn't use at all. (I'd gotten it to dab Fray-Check on if needed.) Or it could refer to the invisible length of floral wire that vanished into the table grain in the photo.
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i love rotary cutters *_*, i just wrote an entry about how i'm so excited that i was able to cut through davey board with them. WHY DID I NOT KNOW BEFORE.
otherwise, clicking that hollander link was bad news (i never shopped from them, i always shop from tallas) because now i really am in love with this!
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i'm not the best at bookbinding and i have a lot to learn still and i haven't been able to do it in a while, but i hope to start making some post-apoc inspired ones soon that'll kick me back into the habit.
i know what you mean about not needing another hobby, haha.between my writing, my dollhouse and binding, i think i'm set on hobbies!
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I'm trying to limit myself to hobbies that I think I can make at least support themselves. XD
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I like the black flower, because it's Not Girly. On the other hand, it would barely show up on my hair.
Wow, I used to do crafts ... maybe after we ship the Young Lady off to college, I will again ... .
XD
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Or I could maybe link (http://offgenemi.deviantart.com/art/cherry-blossom-pink-57620798) to examples (http://offgenemi.deviantart.com/art/Colorful-Chrysanthemums-53015743) instead of attempting to explain. :) (I think I've seen them where the inner petal was much smaller, but I don't seem to have any faved on DA at the moment).
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> consults mirror <
Um. Yeah. You're right. But about 15 years ago it would have been a different story!
> sigh <
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Fascinating look into what is used! Thank you!
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The dark one is really nice too. Probably would look best for someone with light/fair hair though.
So what are you planning to do with all these lovelies you are making?
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http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=35874
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BEST PART OF THE LIST. XD
(All that's missing is NOT SHOWN: CAT)
As for coming up with a DIY substitute for the drying box...got any big chunks of styrofoam handy? The blocky molded ones that are used in packaging can be really handy for that sort of thing -- if the floral wire you're using isn't stiff enough to just jab in place directly, you could poke holes in it beforehand with a BBQ skewer or skinny knitting needle or something. (The molded packing-crate frame-shaped styrofoam thingies also make decent improv bead looms...)
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