Rosettes, Rosettes, Rosettes!

Hi everyone.  Karon here from Karon's Krafty Korner.  My turn to visit you all here at Sheila's blog.  May I start by wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and joys of the season.  Thanks Sheila, for letting me visit each month.

On my blog recently, I made a rosette Christmas Tree, and whilst trying to work out lengths of paper, diameter of finished rosette, etc etc I thought I would put together a useful little table and rule of thumb.

Apparently, the rule of thumb to make a nice size rosette is to take the diameter that you want your finished rosette to be, multiply this by 4 and this will be the length of paper you need to pleat.  Also the width of the paper is to be half the diameter of the finished rosette.

So, for example,  if you want a 6" rosette - the width of your paper strip needs to be 3".  The length of your strip is to be 4 x 6" (the finished diameter), 24" in length, so two strips of 12" connected.

So, once you have your strips of paper ready, you will need to score them.  I found for the bigger rosettes, I scored every 1/4" for the smaller rosettes every 1/8" worked well.

I am going to make a four inch (diameter) rosette.  So, I have two strips of paper one 12" and one 4" for a total of 16" in length.

I find this works for me.  First place your paper right side up on the score board and score every 1".  Then flip it over and score every 0.5".

Now, you can fold this strip.  Start right side up and start with a valley fold and you will end with a valley fold.

Now, when I was trying to find out how to make a rosette (I had never made one before - I know, sad isn't it!), the only tutorials I could find were all saying "after scoring cut this little strip off the both ends in order to connect the two pieces of paper properly."  Like below! Doing it this way though, you are cutting off 0.5" of length and then when you join them another 0.5".

However, I found when I was experimenting, that if you just flip the second strip of paper before scoring, then you do not need to take off any little pieces.  See below.

Flip over and score every 0.5"

Now with your second strip scored, you will start with a mountain fold and end with a mountain fold.

So now you have the two strips folded, one with a valley and one with a mountain fold, you can connect them. And you only lose 0.5" instead of the 1" off the length when connected.

It's all in the fold.  When you score the card stock, (I'll show you on the white side as it's clearer), your indents are valley and mountain.  However, you actually fold the opposite way!  So if your score line is valley, you actually mountain fold it and vice a versa.  This stops the card stock from tearing :-) 

Connect the ends to form your circle and then press down to make your rosette - securing with a circle and I use hot glue :-)

I have also put together a table for rosette sizes, diameter, width of paper and length of strips needed and hope you find this useful.  If you already have something like this, then I apologise, but at least it is a permanent record for me :-)

Finished Diameter of Rosette	Width of paper strip needed	Length of paper strip needed
6”	3”	24”
5.5”	2.75”	22”
5”	2.5”	20”
4.5”	2.25”	18”
4”	2”	16”
3.5”	1.75”	14”
3”	1.5”	12”
2.5”	1.25”	10”
2”	1”	8”
1.5”	0.75”	6”
1”	0.5”	4”

For my Rosette Christmas tree I did two of each rosette and only one of the 1" size for the top.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Happy crafting.