Painters Towel Rosettes

I've seen these beauties EVERYWHERE in blogland and wanted to make them so badly!  I'm sure you've seen them too-beautiful canvas/burlap/fabric rosettes!  More specifically I wanted to make this from Creations By Kara.  Isn't her lamp gorgeous!?!? I've been fawning over it for weeks!

I have a very boring lamp in my reading nook and thought that this would be a perfect project for that lamp.....what was I thinking?

Lamp-Before Transformation

I thought the rosettes would be easy enough to make- it seemed like everyone understood how they were made and most instructions/tutorials were "twist the fabric and wrap it in a circle"-sounds easy enough....boy was I in for a treat.  Firstly I bought painters towels, which are different than canvas (I think this was the main reason my frustration grew-the material made a difference as to how my roses looked).  As I started tearing my fabric, getting nice frayed edges and attempting to "twist and wrap" I grew increasingly frustrated.  My rose DID NOT look like the picture (visual learner!).  I was not happy.  It looked like a big pile of shaggy, ugly fabric.  It was at this point I said to Ty "I'm making a dark rum & coke, you want one?" 

A word of advice to any newbie making rosettes, one individual rosette looks goofy and made me feel a little hopeless.  MAKE MORE!  They look best clustered together with others.  Mine are quite shabby chic, since the painters towels frayed easily.  The more I made the more I liked them.  As I wrapped and glued my twisted fabric, I alternated the direction of twisting.  After every other hot glue dot, I twisted the fabric the other direction and kept wrapping.  It gave the rose more visual interest/abstraction. Also if you want it to look like a real rose, twist the fabric AWAY from the center as you wrap.  Rose petals curl out, and by twisting this way it looks more natural/authentic.

So I made more rosettes and hated them less and less the more I made.  I thought I'd be able to crank through this project quickly, since it didn't seem very time consuming! Ah ha ha ha, not the case.  I am learning I cannot create a project and post it the same day, unless I start at 8am!  Finally around 10pm I felt like I had made enough rosettes to start gluing them to my lamp shade....it was the moment of truth!  The lampshade had white spirals around the corners and I decided to use these as my guides of where to put the roses.  Much like my scrapbook layouts, I place everything out first to view the layout BEFORE gluing. 

progress is made-slowly

Even Ty agreed it didn't look that bad.  We both had our doubts at first, but it turned out OK.  I don't LOVE it but I don't hate it.  And to be honest I think the whole lamp cost me $14 at IKEA, and then another $7 for the painters towel, so I'm not too worried.  It adds a bit of drama and I think it's better than it was before-which was the whole idea in the first place.  Now I think I need some pillows to liven up that chaise?  What do you think?