How to make fringed flowers

A customer recently asked how do I normally make fringed flowers. If you are like me, who don't own a fringer, or that you feel it's not necessary to own one, here's a tutorial on how to make fringed flowers using office supplies that you could easily find.

You'll need:

• a pair of sharp end/ pointed scissors
• a bulldog clip
• paper strip of 3/8" - 5/8" width, at least 6" long ( the longer the better as the flower will look prettier, but it also means you'll need to fringe more).

In this tutorial, I'm using 5/8" width strips.

The steps:

First, fold the paper strip in half by bending it. Do not crease it as we want to avoid the 'folding line'.  A folded paper strip saves time especially if you are fringing a longer strip. You can also fold the paper strip 2 - 3 times in half if the strip is very long. 

Using a bulldog clip, hold the folded paper strips together. Make sure the paper clip holds about 2-3 mm from one edge of the paper. The paper clip functions as a 'block' that limits the cuts, which prevents you from cutting through the paper strip when fringing. 

Start fringing the paper. Make small cuts at every 1-2 mm across the entire length of the strip. The smaller the distance between the cuts, the prettier the fringed flower will be. But make sure you keep the cuts consistent.

Once the fringing is completed, start rolling the fringe into a tight coil using a slotted tool. Apply a dab of glue at the end of the strip to seal the coil. Let dry. You may also place a few dabs of glue now and then while rolling the fringed strip to hold it better in place.

 Gently push the fringed coil off the slotted tool.

Arrange the fringes outwards with your fingers. You now have a fringed flower in bloom!

Variation 1
You could try gluing a strip of 1/8" wide strip of different colour to one edge of the paper (shown in following photo). Choose colours that either complement or contrast one another. Make sure the entire length is glued down, and let dry before you start fringing. The rest of the steps are as described above.

Make sure when you are rolling the coil, the colour strip is facing inside...

...so that when you arrange the fringes and push them open, you'll see them facing upwards and not downwards (refer photo below). 

Variation 2
Glue another piece of paper strip of shorter width to the 5/8" width paper and let dry.

Fringed along the entire length of both paper strips.  

 Start rolling from the shorter width paper strip. The rest of the steps are as described previously.

 This is how the fringed flower turn out to be - with a shorter fringed flower center.

 

If you would like to create a fringed flower with solid center, just replace the fringed center (the light purple strip) with a strip of 1/8" wide paper.

Hope this tutorial helps. Have fun fringing!

p/s: I spent quite sometime taking photos and writing the tutorial, so I would really appreciate it if you link back or acknowledge this site when using the tutorial for non-commercial sharing. Thanks!