Shabby Flowers with Kiki Halbert

We have new design team member Kiki Halbert on the blog with us today sharing some of her "shabby" expertise. Let's see how she is dressing up her "inside out" layouts using the contents from the January kit HARMONY.

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I adore flowers. No layout is complete with at least a few flowers. They are my go-to embellishment for giving a layout its final touches.

So imagine the irony when I was actually nervous making my own flowers. When I started scrapbooking I didn't have any fancy die cutting machine, so I stuck with using pre-made flowers. I figured that making my own shabby flowers would be complicated and I would mess them up. Oh, how I was right...but in a good way!

It's a simple but fun thing to do when you need a little something on your layout and have leftover paper scraps from the kit.

Now, for a couple of my layouts, I did use a die cutting machine:

I used a couple of paper scraps to create the paper flowers with some small brads to secure them. I like to crumble them up for some texture, and even brush the creases with Vintage Photo distress ink for some extra dimension.

For the layout below, I used some simple flowers in my stash and used one of the charms to make some whimsical centers for the flowers by taking the charm apart. On one flower I used the pompom, and on another I used a crystal.

On this following layout though, I created my own really shabby flowers by cutting rough circles out of paper scraps, and then sprayed the circles with water lightly.

I scrunched the paper in my hand to give it a really shabby feel. I then layered the scrunched papers while they were still damp and formed them into a flower shape, and set a brad in the middle to keep the two layers together. Once the layers dry, they stay in that shape very well. And there you have it...two very shabby flowers.