Prize Ribbon Rosette Image Brooches

Here is a project I came up with last year when designing a craft for a workshop. This wasn’t the final craft I shared, but wanted to dig it back out to share on my blog. They are little prize ribbon rosettes with images used for the centerpieces. Unfortunately, I didn’t shoot step shots of the process, so I’ll do my best to describe how they were made.I’ve been collecting vintage paint-by-numbers for some time now and thought small vignettes pulled from a couple of them would make great centerpiece images for the rosettes. Here are a few from my collection.I scanned sections of my paintings and reduced the images to fit 1-inch x 1.25-inch oval wooden disks that are 3/16-inch thick. You can see in the first photo that I modified the some of the colors in the paintings in Photoshop to match my different ribbons, such as the flower stand umbrella and flowers. I printed the images to a printable cotton fabric sheet, trimmed them out 1/4-inch larger than the disk, ran the cotton piece through my Xyron Sticker Maker and wrapped the piece over and around the disk. I didn’t coat the final piece- I preferred the cotton fabric finish.

I strung enough beads onto upholstery thread to circle the disk, I tied off the string, placed it around the outer disk and glued it secure from the backside with Beacon 3-In-1 craft glue. I used two rows of small beads on one brooch. I then made petals or ruffles from ribbon adhered them to the back of the disk to create the rosette, adding one or two extra strips cut at angles as tails. I finished the pieces off with pinback hardware covering the bases of the hardware with scrap leather to hide all the glue and raw ribbon ends of the rosette.