Construction of a Flower

Building the Base

A difficult task was thinking about a way to build the bases or sepals of the flowers, which is the part of the flower that is connected to the stem and acts as a house for the petals. The first idea that came to my mind was creating a half circle domed piece of copper sheet metal (0.3mm thick) made from a flat circle that gets punched in a doming punch. After thinking about it for a while, I had the idea of punching lines into the dome before doming the circle (the punched lines also help to give the shape a slight dome). I also decided to pre-cut and punch the sepal flaps before doming. I imagined it to end up looking like a perfect half sphere with lines punched onto the surface. Here are the images of the sepal shapes before being domed properly in a doming punch:

Punched circle with flat flaps to hold the flower

After I finished punching all those lines into the circles, It was time to dome them to give them more of a spherical shape. I annealed each circle very well and I simply placed them in the largest dome in my set and I gently pushed down to reduce the diameter. This is where magic happened. somehow, the lines that I punched on the surface acted like fold lines, which allowed the metal to fold over itself beautifully creating the most beautifully realistic texture to the sepals. Here are some images of the sepal circles after being pressed down in the doming punch:

the doming punch caused the punch lines to fold over themselves causing beautiful ridges to form