Homemade easy satin flowers w/tutorial

The other day I had the dreadful misfortune of having a frozen laptop. the only way I could think to fix it was to unplug everything and let the battery drain (did not know how to remove it) and had absolutely nothing to look at all day. So, I made these flowers. I think this is something that should be done with ventilation, or outside... just saying... I did mine in the house, closed windows (its freezing) no fan and actually I am feeling much smarter today.. go figure why.

I really enjoyed the process... which of course had to be simple for me to do.

You need: satin ribbon (must be satin) which I picked up dirt cheap at Michaels (2.50 a roll). Scissors, hot glue, and an embellishment if you desire, and a heat gun optional

Here is how... I cut squares off a roll of  satin ribbon  Each square gets a slit in each side, like this

 (I outlined the slit in black so you can see) It is simple, don't let my picture fool you, its a simple cut into each side.

 

Next you will need a candle, like a small tea candle. You do not want a wax puddle building so, blow it out when you aren't using it.
You will be holding one edge of the ribbon and gently singing the other edges. Do yourself a favor and don't rush and try to do all the edges at once, the satin gets very hot quickly and will burn your fingers as I did several times.
Have something to drop them on too, like a craft sheet or metal sheet. I used a placemat, which was fine until later when I did something regretable :P  Best way is to singe one side, move on to another piece and do a bunch, then go back and do the other sides.  You will see that the ribbon curls slightly making it look like a petal. They may stick slightly, but as they cool and dry you will pop them right off.

I then would glue 2 together at the center. I found warm (hot) glue was the best way to go. I later added a 3rd and some of them a 4th set of petals.  I added embellishments later using a glue gun again (recollections make a nice little set of flower middles for about 2 bucks)

After they were all done I continued to play with fire, burning off the webs. Brought me back to my ukranian egg dying days :) You could use a hair dryer instead for doing that.

My final thought was brilliant (in a way). I felt the flowers looked to "made' so I took my heat gun and gently heated them from above whilst they sit in a tray. This was great, made them curl in a bit and look nicer. Bad part of that idea was doing it on a plastic placemat... melted the plastic.. but no real harm done, just one ruined placemat. 

So now I have lots of flowers for my never ending projects.. :)  If I was willing to spend 2.50 I would buy some green ribbon and make leaves, I just have a hard time trusting myself in Michaels.