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I heard about David Austin roses for the first time through this tutorial by Lia Griffith. A rose with more than 100 petals, I had never before undertaken such an ambitious project.
Upon inquiring, I learned that Juliet Roses were just one of the varieties of roses created by David Austin. His roses all have the particularity of having a lot of petals (in addition to having a smell to fall). Those in the center, when they are not yet in full bloom, are grouped in small groups of 5 or 6. Apparently, you don’t see many of them at the florist’s because it’s a flower reserved for bridal bouquets… but I’ll try to get my hands on them as soon as the confinement is over.
Lia Griffith’s tutorial is easy to follow but does not give complete satisfaction because the rose obtained, very beautiful, does not really look like the natural rose. OK, I also used two colors that are too contrasted because I am very limited in my choice of 90g paper 🙁
I then tried different methods (following this YouTube tutorial and then this YouTube tutorial), then Tiffanie Turner’s from the book The Fine Art of Paper Flower but he seriously lacks illustrative photos and her explanations are not very clear.
I then tried Jessie Chui’s method in Paper Flower Art and almost succeeded!
I understood, while reading his tutorial, that the secret of a David Austin rose was the roundness of the 1st layers ofouter petals. To do this, you have to press the petals inside and try to keep the round shape without slackening for these 1st layers. Then, the following layers can be less tight, or even more open towards the outside. However, the shape of the petals in Jessie’s tutorial forces me to place the petals completely crooked and creates dysmetry because at some point you can’t follow your hand or your eyes
Second thing I noticed with this flower: Even if this model gave me the most beautiful David Austin flower since the beginning, I was not very satisfied with the colors chosen: there was too little contrast between the inside and the outside, due to my too limited choice of paper: #569 inside and #616 outside.
A small survey on Facebook shows that if the flower is less well done but the color contrast is more striking, people will prefer the contrast.
Thus, to improve this model of rose :
- I took Jessie Chui’s tutorial in Paper Flower Art. She recommends 60g for indoors, which I did not so I outscretched from 180g to death. I kept her petal shape for the inner petals & followed her tutorial
- But I used a perfectly symmetrical and oval shape for the outer petals, so my petals are no longer crooked.
- For the first 2 levels of outer petals, you have to continue to press the inner petals so that the whole forms a round: 6 petals / level.
- Moreover, I used colors that contrast much more: #20E1 + #569 for the pink flower (it’s not ideal but it’s the best combo available for me) and #17A6 + #583 for the red flower. Enjoy!
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