Raffia Flower Tutorial

     Hello! I created this page for a very good friend of mine. This is her oldest daughter dressed up for Halloween about 12 years ago. I've been wanting to scrap these adorable photos of her for awhile now. I also did this for the Denim Blues Challenge at Funtoolas,
http://funtoolas.ning.com/forum/topics/january-denim-blues-challenge and for the January Distressed in the New Year Challenge at Scrabook.com,
http://www.scrapbook.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/1568397/tp/1/ with the twist to use denim. I cut up a pair of my son's shorts which he's outgrown, and used them to create this page. I also have another tutorial for you, with these fun raffia flowers.

Here's a close-up.

To start with, cut a piece of sturdy cardstock at 4" wide for the larger flower, and/or 3" wide for the smaller flower. Wrap your raffia around the cardstock.

Then slide it off the cardstock holding and pinching the raffia in the center with your fingers and thumb.

Use a smaller piece of raffia to tie it all together making a double knot to secure it.

Then start spreading apart the raffia as much as you can.

To fill in the gaps on the 2 sides, I just glued some pieces of raffia together to give the illusion of a full flower. 

After trimming up the stray pieces I just added this silk flower.

You can add whatever flower you'd like, or add a button like I did with the smaller one.