Paper Crafting: Making & Utilizing Rosette Forms

Once again, necessity is the mother of invention. When crafting rosettes as product prototypes, I would often find that the unique paper I wanted to use was in short supply as well as the fact that I am a very frugal crafter and can hardly stand to use more material than I have to for any project. And so, I developed homemade rosette forms. With a form, you can use the same length of paper and create various sizes of rosettes, like the two below that were crafted using identical size paper strips.

Just as important as maximizing your papers, using forms also makes for more perfectly shaped rounds and the inner circle area of the finished rosettes, should you be leaving that area exposed when crafting a small wreath shape, for example.

Before making forms, I was using everything from vintage Tupperware hamburger patty containers (so great if you can find them), sauce pans, and any other flat bottom/straight sided round container in my house. But it occurred to me that I could actually make my own and make them to the sizes I wanted, and so my custom rosette forms were born. These forms are also shared in my upcoming book, Rosette Art, but here on my blog I am able to give a bit more information and imagery.

To make the forms, purchase inexpensive embroidery hoops of various sizes from 4 to 8 inches. These usually cost under $2 each.

Removed the outer rings and used only the inner rings for the forms.

Cut heavy chip board intoto 8-inches squares for mounting the hoops. You can also use foam core or cardboard.With a glue gun and hot glue, add small dots along the rim of a hoop,

and mount to the center of the board. Using too much hot glue may cause puddles to dry into the ring form and may affect your rosette shapes. Continue assembling the remaining hoops and boards.Mark the size on each board with a marker, rubber stamps or number stickers.To make smaller form sizes, use smaller embroidery hoops or the center ring of rolls of tape such as masking tape and craft tape.

Using Rosette Forms

Here is an example of how a rosette form can be used to save paper and create large rosettes. I trimmed two identical strips of vintage shelf paper edging. You may need to experiment with scrap paper to determine the best width paper strips for your projects as there is hard-set formula for width, length and final rosette diameter. In my opinion, it comes down to final effect preference. However, if your paper strip is too short, you may be unable to collapse the final rosette into shape and can tear your precious paper along the folds. TIP: The narrower the paper strip, the more expandable it is.

I scored each paper strip with a stylus on a scoring board and accordion folded each.

With paper adhesive, I glued each strip into a round. I punched out circles for each rosette from heavy cardstock and placed one on a non-form surface and the other in the center of a rosette form. I placed the folded paper rounds over the cardstock circles.I made a pool of hot glue with the glue gun on the smaller cardstock circle and collapsed the paper round over it, pressing the entire piece inward toward the center and holding until the glue cooled. For the larger rosette, I placed hot glue around the outer area of the cardstock circle and collapsed that paper round over it, allowing the paper to expand to the inner wall of the rosette form and holding in place until the glue cooled.

This can also be achieved, by collapsing the folded paper rounds inside out and adding glue to the center areas from the backside before pressing a cardstock circle onto it and holding in place until the glue cools.Cover glue areas with another rosette or centerpiece. If you are crafting a wreath with an open center, craft a heavy cardstock circle nearly as large as the final rosette with an area cut from the center that is large enough so as not to show through the final rosette center. Heavy cardstock backing may necessary for wreath shape rosettes to keep the rosette from curling in on itself unless the wreath will be ultimately adhered to another surface, such as a greeting card like the Chevron Wreath from Paper-Source. Utilizing rosette forms will keep your wreaths perfectly circular along the outer and inner edges.