Flower Clusters

I've been scrapping boy layouts for years, but recently started scrapping pictures of my 1 year old baby girl. So I started using more flowers and need some tips and advice.

Any good tutorials for creating a flower cluster? And any good way for glueing them down without messing up the original arrangement? I see so many beautiful layouts here with nice flower arrangement but I find it so hard to get the arrangement just right. Mine doesn't look right, like it's not balanced or something is out of place. And I find it even harder to glue everything in place once happy with the cluster.

I love flower clusters. I have found that I like to use brads for the centers. If I have flowers that have their own centers I usually us glue dots. What I do is I lay them out the way I want them and then start at one end of the cluster and pick up one flower at a time and glue it. If I am using brads as centers I will make the wholes in all of them and I will then take them off the paper one at a time and lay them out the same way on my table. and or the best thing I have learned to do is take a picture of the cluster after I get it the way I want it. Then I will load the picture on to my computer and follow it when I am gluing it together. I have had so many flower clusters get all messed up when trying to glue them.

I also like to over lap the flower petals. so they have some dimension.

The other thing I do is put leaves in the cluster.

I hope this helps.

I also sometimes take a picture IF I have to mess it all up to put it back down. Normally, though, I lift up one at a time and glue in place, seems to work well enough!

I also try to work with the rule of three. And I start with my bigger flowers and work to smaller ones. I also think that they look best "attached" to a corner, or the picture. Something should anchor the cluster to the page.

Yes I always go with 3 5 or 7 never even numbers of anything.

I like the cluster to be anchored to something with the corner or a picture or something. I also like to take the long skinny leaves or fern leaves and fan them out and use them to anchor the corner then put the flowers on them.

I also like to work with 1 3 5 or 7 colors as well as items.


Now I want to go do a layout with a flower cluster. maybe I will do a flower cluster card....

Yes....

Work in odd numbers

Anchor the cluster to something else on your page (so it's not "floating")

Use a variety of sizes (one large, one medium, one small)

Try copying or "scraplifting" some arrangements from other layouts to help get you started

Balance the flower cluster with something else in the opposite corners (ie. flower cluster on the corner of your picture....large title in the opposite corner, journaling tag with a flower or other embellishment in the other corner), to make a visual triangle

I use glue dots for my flowers usually...they hold well and go on dry so they don't mess up the flowers.....

I also agree with working in odd numbers. Like others, I just pick one up at a time and put a glue dot on the back of it and put it back down and it usually works well!

I use Beacon 3 and 1 to put my flowers down I love it for any thing that's 3 dimensional... I also think you have to have leaves or some to take the place of leaves to make a flower cluster look finished.