The Purple Dahlia

Today I have a real treat for you, and just in time for Mother's Day!  I have had this project pinned for a really long time now and have been putting it off because it just looked too hard, but hey guess what its not too bad!  Ok so I may be comparing this to the curtains which took a really long time to do so anything seems easy at this point but whatever :)  Today's project is a dahlia flower pin and Im super excited to share with you!  Below is the original inspiration for todays project.

A good tutorial is from Make and Do Girl, she has the patterns I used to make the petals for the flower.  Go to her site, poke around, give her some blog love and check out her patterns that were seriously just perfect!  She also has tips of different kinds of felt, but since Hobby Lobby only has one kind to chose from I didnt really pay attention to that.

Check out all my felt colors!  4 for $1 makes this project $4 for the felt.  Turns out you can get 1 flower per felt sheet so that a potential of 16 flowers I can make, how great is that!

Here is all the shapes I needed cut out.  Again go check out Make and Do Girl for the patterns, I didnt come up with them so I wont take credit for them.  She even tells you how many to cut out which out of everything was the most useful bit by far!  Oh and the cardboard is to give the flower a little stability, which you will never even if you dont want to make this a pin, so dont forget this step.  You can use a cereal box so dont go and buy cardboard Im sure you have something you could us around the house!

After you get all your petals cut out, warm up your hot glue gun and get to ready to start gluing.  I forgot to take a picture of this next step but there are 2 size circles for the backing.  First glue the larger circle to the cardboard circle.  Make some cut around the edge of the circle (the part of the felt that sticks out around the circle) then apply some hot glue small sections at a time.  After you apply the glue flip the edges over the circle to make a nice smooth edge.  Once you have made it all the way around the circle you can glue the smaller circle over the other side of the cardboard so that way you dont see any cardboard and all you see is smooth pretty felt.

Next up is gluing the petals together.  There has been some argument on what adhesive is best to use, but in the end I think hot glue was the best because it sets the fastest.  Yeah you run the risk of burning your fingers but that totally shrinks in comparison to how long you have to wait for the glue to dry with other options.  In the picture above you can see i glued the bottom square edges together...I want to tell you this is actually the wrong way to do this...If you make it pointy like that it wont sit flat when you go to glue the petal to the base.  So even though its a little more work ou need to fold the two sides in half and have them meet in the middle of the petal to form a flat bottom for you to glue to your base.

You can see here how they are pointy and not sitting flat.  Also, make sure you glue each petal down one at a time.  Apply a little to the back of the part you glued in half and then press that portion of the petal down onto the backing.  So the only part of the largest petal you are going to glue down to the backing is the bottom 1/4 of the petal that you glued together.  From the picture above you can see the gaps and that because I put them all down at the same time.  If you glue them down one at a time you can make sure they are all lined up evenly and make sure the petals overlap correctly so be careful there.

Same song second verse for the middle size petals.

Final verse, do that same step again for the smallest petals, and here is where you can really have some fun!  I had a crystal button left over from doing my headboard which I hot glued here.  A note, if the button is flat on the back it wont work as well as one that has a hook like part on the back since the hook-thing can go down into the flower and sit a little better.

If you dont want to do a button/jewel you can just cut a thin strip of felt, roll it up and glue it into the center of the flower.  Which you can see above, and on a side note this is also the flower I did the correct way.

Here the 2 flowers are side by side and you can really see the difference here.  Of course do what works best for you but you can clearly see that some methods work better than others.  I love the ivory one and cant wait to share the interesting way I am going to use this one!!

For Mother's Day though, all you need to do is add a pin backing with hot glue so they can wear it as a broach and you are good to go!  Super easy right?!  Well the cutting does take some time but you know what I think they are so cute and cant wait to experiment with other colors!  What are you going to do with yours?!?

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