Other designers: where do you find your paper and fabric flowers for turning into digital elements?

So, I make a lot of my own.

Here is one that I made by photographing tools at a swap meet. I clipped the photo onto a 12x12 canvas in Photoshop, and turned down the opacity of the image. You can change the color of the background to give it a lighter or darker or colored tint.

For this background, I photographed my bunker gear, then added some texture and effects to it by "overlaying" it onto a paper template that I purchased. You can do the same technique by going shopping and photographing items with patterns and textures.

For this ribbon, I took a piece of ribbon and stapled it. I laid it against a solid white background with a lot of light. I took a photo of it and deleted the background, turning it into a PNG of the ribbon. I then desaturated it so it could be colorized to whatever color. You can do the same thing with flowers- it's just time-consuming.

You could start by taking pictures of items against a solid background without shadow and from the "head-on" perspective, face-to-face as if you were to see it on the page. Desaturating the items like ribbon and textures can allow for colorizing as needed. Play with filters and stuff to make things look abstract. Take super-close up it items for better detail.

Hope this helps.

PS- there is always templates you can purchase, too.