Rubber Stamping Ideas: How to Make Paper Flower Embellishments for Scrapbook Layouts and Cards

Floral embellishments are popular with scrapbookers, card makers and paper crafters. They can add interest and texture to scrapbook pages, mini albums, handmade greeting cards, art journals, art trading cards, and mixed media art projects. Unfortunately, floral embellishments can be expensive. This guide will show you how to make your own hand stamped flower embellishments at a fraction of the price.

Choosing Rubber Stamps:

The first step is choosing the stamps you will use to create your flowers. You can use any kind of stamps as long as the design is appropriate- rubber stamps, clear stamps, foam stamps, and woodblock stamps will all work. The image is the important thing. If you already own stamps, take a look through your stamp stash to see if you have any that can be used. Collect them together in a pile close to your work area.

If you don't already have some appropriate stamps to use, perhaps you can borrow some from a creative friend who does. If not, you may want to consider buying some flower stamps of your own. There is a section of this article below where costs are compared between buying stamps and buying ready made flower embellishments. It will help you decide whether flower stamps are a smart purchase for you.

If you do decide to buy new stamps, I recommend looking at coordinated sets of stamps that have 2 or more flower designs that can be layered on top of each other. Here are several suggestions:

-Bella Flora stamp set by Inque Boutique
-Butterflies and Blossoms clear stamp set by Impression Obsession
-Autumn Leaves Build-A-Flower stamp set By Katie Pertiet

You could easily find hundreds more possibilities that would work just as well.

You will also need ink pads in colors that match your intended projects. If you need to buy some ink, please be sure to check out the inkpad product reviews I've written for Tim Holtz Distress Inks, Fluid Chalk,Stazon Inks, Brilliance inks, and Adirondack inks. Those are all fantastic inks; in my opinion, they are well worth the money. If you don't own any inks at all, you might also want to take a look at Rubber Stampede's collections of dye inks. They are super cheap, and buying a collection will give you a good selection of colors to work with. The most affordable way I currently know of to get a lot of ink at a great price is to buy used inkpads on ebay, but it can be time consuming to find the best deals.

Choosing Papers For Your Flowers:

After you've chosen your stamps, the next step is to pick papers to stamp on. The most cost effective thing to do is to use paper scraps left over from other layouts, cards and projects you've already made. You won't need much paper for these stamped images.

I enjoy stamping flowers onto patterned paper, but I also use solid papers and cardstock as well.

Stamping the Flowers:

Choose several different colors of ink that will look good with the papers you've selected. Stamp multiple flowers onto your chosen papers using the inks of your choice. You are going to want to stamp a variety of sizes and colors of flowers.

Cutting Out the Stamped Flowers:

I like to use decorative scissors to cut out the stamped flowers. I usually use Fiskars Mini Scallop Paper Edgers for cutting out small flowers. I like the small-scale design of the Mini Scallop. There are plenty of other designs available, but the Mini Scallop ones are my favorite for this purpose. If you don't have any decorative scissors, you could raid your sewing basket and use pinking shears, or you could use regular scissors instead.

Layering the Flowers and Attaching the Flower Centers:

Choose a small flower and a large flower to layer on top of each other. You might even want to choose a medium sized flower to put in the middle; that's up to you. Go with what looks good.

For the flower centers, there are a myriad of possibilities. You can use brads, buttons, eyelets, more hand stamped images, rhinestones, crystals, cabochons, or charms. Your choice of flower center will affect the next step in the process. If you use buttons, choose coordinating thread and sew hand stamped flowers together with the button on top. If you choose a brad, you can use a paper piercing tool to make a hole through all the flowers and attach the brad through the hole. If you use a rhinestone, crystal, or cabochon, you can attach all the layers together using the adhesive of your choice.

The flower is now ready to use and enjoy!

Make Your Own Flowers and Save Money on Scrapbooking Supplies:

Many scrappers throw their scraps away when they are finished scrapping. If you consistently use your paper scraps for making flowers instead of throwing the scraps away, you'll save quite a bit of money on scrapbooking supplies. I make an effort to make a few flowers after every scrapping session so that I can use up my scraps. Then I add the stamped flowers to my stash of supplies so that I have them handy when I need them.

Doing the Math on the Savings:

The set of flower stamps I used (the Bella Flora stamp set by Inque Boutique) cost me $3.99. I already have a lifetime supply of inks in my stash, so I didn't have to buy those. If you don't already have inks, you'll have to add the cost of the inks into your calculation as well. Costs vary depending on how many colors and which inks you buy. Since I use leftover scraps of paper to create my flowers, the costs of the paper is negligible. If you don't plan to use leftover paper scraps, you do need to add the cost of your paper when you do your own comparison. The flower centers are expensive, but, if you are going to do a fair comparison, you can't really include the cost of the centers in the calculation, because you would still be spending money on buying flower centers if you were going to continue to buy Prima flowers. So you will have that expense either way.

In comparison, you will usually spend between $4-$8 on a single package of Prima flowers. To do an accurate comparison, you have to count the number of flowers in the packages you normally buy. The last package of flowers I bought (Prima's Painterly Petals) had 12 flowers in it and cost about $4.00. So, if you compare the stamps I bought for $3.99 against the package of flowers I bought for $4.00, you can see that the stamps were, by far, a better buy. The flowers got used up pretty quickly; I only had to stamp 13 or more flowers with the stamps in order to justify buying the stamps instead of the flowers. Since the stamps will last indefinitely, that wasn't a problem. I've stamped hundreds of flowers with them, and I usually make a few more flowers every time I scrap. Plus there are other stamps in the stamp set that I use on my cards and layouts as well.

This math doesn't include any additional consideration about the cost of my time. Since time is money, it's not completely realistic to ignore the cost of my time, but I figure that for most people, this is a hobby, not a career. If it's your career, it might end up being more cost effective to buy your floral embellishments instead of stamping them. Stamping flowers is time consuming.

Color Choices:

One other consideration is colors. Whether you choose to buy your flowers or stamp them, you have to make an investment. If you buy flowers, you have to invest in a whole bunch of different flower colors, unless you plan on making every project the same color. If you choose to stamp your flowers, you'll have to invest in a rainbow of different ink colors. Personally, I think inks are a better investment, because inks are more versatile than jars of flowers are. Inks also last a long time once you've made the initial investment. Once you've spent the money to have a good variety of inks in your stash, you'll love the convenience of being able to whip up any color of flower you need to match a project. It beats running out to the store to buy supplies every time you need a flower in a color you don't have on hand.

Lots of Possibilities For Making Paper Flowers:

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of different techniques for making paper flowers. This technique only demonstrates one possible way of doing it. Keep in mind that you can probably find other flower making techniques that would save you even more money, so don't be afraid to explore the possibilities. Happy crafting!