Summer Craft - Sunflower Hanger

The first step is just finding a good flower image (or any image, really). One that has a decent contrast between the background and the foreground, so that you may create a distinction when it comes time to trace it.

The second step involves inverting the image (if necessary) and adjusting the grayscale slider to get the edges of the image defined nicely to make the tracing come out good. The settings I used are in the second screenshot.

Trace your image using the built-in feature. If you've done your work outside of XCS, you probably already have an SVG file of your shape. This is where you'd bring your file in (skipping the previous steps). 

You will separate the resulting trace path from the image and delete the image from the project file as it is no longer needed once the trace is done.

In order to make the web-like suspension in the middle, if you wish to do that, you'll create a shape for the cutout in the size you wish to use. Once you've sized it up right, you'll use the Combine tool and do a Combine>Subtract at Overlap.

At this point, you're going to create the outlines of the overall shape of the flower. These two outlines are going to become the background of the piece once you add the hanger loop.

After adding the hanger loop to the top of the outer outline, you'll create a small circle and create a circular array (or line them up however you like, be creative!)

You may need to add an outline to the detail layer if needed to hold all the delicate things together. I added one, but should have made it a bit thicker, as the pieces were thin and we were painting with craft paint. If you are spray painting and using spray adhesive on the back of the detail layer, it may not be an issue.

Have fun!