It's no accident that I'm not calling this post a how-to guide. I don't quite feel qualified to give anyone a guide after the terrible time I had making these %*@&#! rosettes. I wouldn't consider myself an extremely crafty person, but I can usually follow directions and get a pretty decent result. That was not the case with these suckers- they are more complicated than they look! I ended up trying out quite a few tutorials, so I thought I'd share what I learned along the way. Perhaps you can avoid some of my mistakes...
I bought most of the paper I used from Paper Source, so I figured their website would be a good place to find a tutorial. Wrong! Using the measurements they gave, I could barely get the two strips of paper to meet. When attached, they formed a sort of cone shape that would not lay flat without tearing. Fail!
Next stop, Martha Stewart. Oh Queen of craftiness, why is your tutorial even less clear than Paper Source's?! Would some photos of the steps kill you?
OK, time to find some DIYers who know what's up. I found several tutorials using the method explained on Catch my Party. It's similar to the Paper Source method, but you attach 3 fans of folded paper together instead of two. This worked a little better. I could actually get something resembling a rosette shape, but had a hard time attaching the fans with a stapler. I ended up with gaps where the fans of paper were attached (in the photo above, the top white rosette was made with this method).
The final method I tried worked the best for me. This tutorial from the Broke-Ass Bride produced the cleanest and best-looking rosettes. One VERY IMPORTANT note: in this guide, you're using two 12" sheets of paper, cutting them both in half, and then glueing the four strips of paper together to make one long 6" x 48" strip. Hopefully your reading comprehension is better than mine, but this wasn't 100% clear to me in the first read-through. I made one using a 6" x 24" strip of paper and ended up with another cone. You can adjust the paper size to make bigger or smaller rosettes, but the length of your paper should always be at least six times the width for this method to work.
A final note on supplies: I used several types of paper with varying results. A medium-weight paper similar to construction paper will work best. I don't recommend using card stock, it is too thick and really a pain to fold. Paper Source's rolls of solid gift wrap are a good weight, and a good value. The fancy fine papers I used really were mighty fine. They were so soft and had a bit of stretch, but beware- they're ridiculously expensive. In retrospect, I probably should have just used scrapbook paper, but I really, really didn't want to go to Michael's...
Have you ever made rosettes? Am I the only one craft-impaired with these?
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