Well hello there!
My first ever meetup is getting closer, April 11th it is! And since I’ve decided to buy and build every kit that will be offered to the people joining (so I can properly know the process and help people through it if needed), this is the next one in that list:
-
Wooden Glooming Book
-
Wooden Flower Basket
So let’s do this Wooden Glooming Book now! I’m gonna become a flower expert at this point lol.
The first thing that took my attention in this kit is that there are separated “kits” inside. You have 4 different mini-bags for the “big” flowers, each of them including their own sheets of parts and instructions paper, and then the main instructions manual and the rest of parts and items for the big event. Here are the four different “flower kits”:
And that’s what I’ll be dealing with today! For the sake of the topic, we’re gonna call them The Fantastic Four.
I’ve justed opened them in a random order! So the first pick was the daisy. After dealing with some Rowood small flower kits and also the Water Lilly and the Golden Sunflower wall arts, the Rowood process of wooden flower making is starting to feel somehow familiar, at least with this one! It was a pretty straightforward process. Little did I know that this one was conveniently gonna be the easiest of the Fantastic Four!
Here’s how my daisies look, including one little baby daisy which, according to the picture on the box, will go on the book itself under all the plant-stem mumbo jumbo.
After this quick build, it was time to do the Orange Tulips! In this one I’ve realized that I sadly didn’t have anything remotely close to magnifying glasses. Man! I don’t know why the part numbers were printed in light orange over this green sheet. It took me ages and a lot of eye effort to be able to identify which part was which 
(besides, you know, assuming it by the shape). I mean, do you see the numbers here? I barely do
Maybe that would be easier for Sherlock though.
Anyway! The tulip process looked great and I love how the flower itself looked already.
The only bad thing about this were the foldable parts for the petals! So fragile, oops.
Gladly there were spare parts included as usual, phew! So after a few more steps and work on the second tulip and the stems, the second Fantastic Four was done. Yay!
Who’s third? That’s Johnny Storm!
Oh, wait. We’re talking about Rowood’s Fantastic Four lol. Then those are the Purple Moth Orchid. The flowers themselves were not that hard to put together, although I found the look of them a bit… Odd, if that’s a thing? A matter of taste I guess!
Then the stems, as usual. Here I found another issue I sometimes find in Rowood’s instruction manuals regarding the multi-stem building progress: the images are sometimes not that clear regarding which possition to rotate the stems or the parts to fit them together, so you just have to guess it and be logical about it
So after a few guesses and brainstorms, our Johnny… Sorry, our orchies were ready to join the party!
Last but not least, the last of the Fantastic Four, the one and only Sakura flowers!
Okay, you guys know I don’t LOVE flower-making (am I a suicidal person for organizing my first ever meetup focused on FLOWER MAKING? Maybe, who knows. I’ve always enjoyed an out of comfort zone good challenge, what can I say ). Wooden flowers I don’t dislike that much, but my biggest issue here is… Repetition! I get bored easily over that matter, sorry not sorry.
So for the sakuras, the first thing I had to do was… 26 petal crafings! Yay…
I later found out that this is because for the Sakuras I wouldn’t be building the flowers and then the stems (like it was the case for the other three Fantastic Four); instead, the flowers would be crafted through the stem-building process. Interesting, huh.
Oh well, not exactly during the stem process, more like an “add this and that to a stem part and fit a few petals to that” kind of thing. Not that bad though!
You know the handicap about doing the flower-making and stem-making at the same time? It really gives you a challenge on the subtle art of where to place your fingers and put the pressure in order not to break anything else in the process
But after sweating a bit… The Fantastic Four are finished and good to go!
Those four flower sets are looking good enough, aren’t they?
So this is it for today, folks! And probably for the weekend, I don’t usually build during those. There’s a lot of me time and family time and friends time to enjoy when free from the working days 
I’ll bring the rest of it by Monday, probably.
I hope you guys have the best of weekends 
See you/read you around!
enjoy 