Artists

My name is Susan Beech and my company is A Petal Unfolds.
Instagram: @apetalundolds; Facebook Page.

I’m originally from Staffordshire in the UK. I was lucky enough to have been brought up on a farm, living very close to nature. I currently live in Brighton, which is on the UK South Coast. I went to university here and I love the interesting people and vibrant art scene.

My passion for DIY started when I became disheartened with the photographic work that I had been doing since university. I felt a need to start making art with my hands again rather than working digitally. After starting to read crafts magazines, I stumbled across an article on paper flowers. I was immediately taken by them, as they seemed so unique and beautiful.

I started working with paper when I took an online class by Brittany Watson Jepsen in August 2013. I was so excited to take the class, where I made my first 3 types of flowers and this is where everything started for me. I learnt about the qualities of crepe paper for the first time and how the paper could be manipulated. I also learnt how difficult it was at the time to source great quality crepe paper in the UK!

I love the qualities of crepe paper and how it can be transformed to make wonderful sculptural shapes. It is so satisfying to take a flat piece of crepe and transform it in to a petal for a flower. Now that I have access to 180gsm paper from Cartotechnica Rossi I am looking forward to being able to experiment with making flowers on a larger scale in beautiful ombre paper.

At the moment my favourite papers are the 60gsm papers from Cartotecnica Rossi. They are a great weight for making the paper Cosmos and Daisies I’ve been working on recently, with a lovely fine grain and a good amount of stretch. I also love the range of colours.

I realised this could possibly be a profession when I was contacted by Grace Bonney of the well known blog Design*Sponge. She had seen my work on Instagram and I was so amazed when she asked me to write a DIY tutorial for the blog. It was a dream come true when I saw my Ranunculus tutorial on the site and it had a big effect on me, I felt so determined to learn more and make my flowers even better.

I came to know about Cartotecnica Rossi through a friend on Instagram. Instagram has a great little community of paper flower makers who are very supportive of each other. I mentioned on there about how I was finding it difficult to find a good natural green crepe paper in the UK and my friend Jennifer Tran mentioned Cartotecnica Rossi. I am very grateful that Cartotecnica now ships to the EU.

My recent projects have included a series of 9 paper flower tutorials for a new Paper Craft book by Dorling Kindersley. I feel very lucky to have been contacted to contribute and seeing my work photographed professionally has been such a dream and very inspiring. The book is due out in October this year.