Nylon Flowers

Hello, and happy Tuesday once again! Christmas is already on Monday, can you believe that? It's insanity. Complete insanity. As per usual, I am now struggling to catch up on last-minute gifts, and this is a favorite craft of mine I always fall back on- nylon flower making! You can make simple to elaborate flowers, and turn them into hairpieces, floral arrangements- just about anything you can do with flowers, you can do with these!

Materials

• Wire Cutters
• Londy Wire
• Nylon Thread (Nylon Sewing Thread)
• Needle-Nosed Pliers
• Low-temp Glue Gun + Sticks
• Nylon Material/Tubing
• Flower pistils/stamens (optional)
• Solid, round cylindrical objects. (I used 2 sizes of stick glues here)
• Floral Tape

Instructions

• Starting with your wire and flower center beads, fold a small bunch of your beads in half, and wrap with wire.

• Next, take your two cylinders, and these will be what we are using to create the petals. For this flower, you will need 3 small petals and 6 large petals. To create them, simply wrap the londy wire around the cylinder, and twist the ends together, trimming the excess, and leaving a wire tail about 1-2in long.

• Then, after shaping all the petals, we'll need to wrap them in nylon. Take one of your nylon tubes, and stretch it over the wire frame, gathering all loose ends at the base of the petal, and bind with the nylon thread. Wrap the loose ends tightly, and firmly tug the string to snap it. Seal with a small amount of hot glue.

• Take your 3 small petals and wrap the wire tails around the base of the flower center we made earlier in this pattern. Afterwards, wrap the remaining 6 large petals around the 3 small petals.

• Finally, seal the wire with some hot glue- after it cools for a few moments, you can squish it down and compact it with your fingers. Use caution here! After this, wrap the stem with floral tape to hide the glue and wire, pulling tightly and covering the entire stem.

• You are done! You can experiment with different petal shapes and layouts to create an endless variety of flowers- go crazy with your colors and shapes, experimenting will get you some very nice results. Enjoy!