Distress Embossing Flowers

Hello! I finally finished this LO I've been working on for the July Monochrome challenge at Scrapbook.com. We had to use turquoise with silver as a twist. While working on this page I came up with these flowers that I wanted to share with you.

Here's my finished LO. It's a photo of me and my mom on Easter Eve getting things ready for the holiday.

First I want to thank Gabrielle Pollacco for the awesome tutorial on making these faux turquoise stones! I had to throw many stones away before getting the right look, so don't be intimidated to try. Here's a link to her tutorial. http://gabriellepollacco.blogspot.com/2010/01/tutorial-how-to-make-faux-polished.html
Now on to mine. Here's what you'll need to make these distress embossed flowers.
1. White and Black cardstock
2. Distress Embossing Ink
3. Distress Embossing Powder in Broken China
4. Silver Embossing Powder
5. Heat Gun
6.Turquoise Stickles
7. Bling or something for the center.
8. Crochet hook or small paintbrush to help shape the flowers

First cut out your flower dies. I used my Cricut Mother's Day Bouquet to cut these. For the large flower I cut 3 flowers from white cardstock at 3 1/2", 2 1/2", and 1 1/2". From the black cardstock I cut 3 at 1" for the center of my flower.

Then I pressed my white flowers into the Distress embossing ink, and used  Broken China Embossing powder on it. Don't forget to use your heat gun. You can get different looks depending on how heavy you want the embossing. For my large flower I went lightly so you can still see alot of the white cardstock. For the smaller flower I used more embossing powder.

Then shape your flower petals. I used a small paintbrush in the middle of the petals and curled them up. Then I used the crochet hook to curl the edges down. Then you pinch the petal together trying not to crease it. Your flowers should look like this.

I love the way they look just like this, but for my project I wanted alot of shimmer so I added stickles to the edges of the flowers in turquoise.

Now for the centers. Use your silver embossing powder on the black flowers. I used tweezers to hold down the centers while heating it, so it won't fly away.

Curl all your petals and glue together alternating your petals so they're not directly on top of eachother. Then add your bling.

Now glue your white embossed flowers together in the same fashion adding your center. There's so many looks you can get with this technique. I'd love to see your version.