DIY Paper Flowers for Spring

It seems you can either love and have one thing or another. House cats or houseplants/cut flowers. If you currently have an indoor cat only you know all about it. If it’s potted they tear it up. If it’s a fancy arrangement from the florist they destroy it and if you really luckily manage to break the vase it came in (imagine water everywhere).

I love flowers and this is kind of a sad thing for me. But when push comes to shove I choose my little furry beasties every time. I tried bringing fake florals into the house but I hated them. They seemed so bad and for some reason kept reminding me of Western Sizzler. What’s that about?

So I figured if I was gonna have fake flowers I was gonna go super fake. A book of cute paper later and I have just that though I must admit, I can’t have them out because the cats are tearing them up. Drat!

For this project you will need:

• Double-sided cardstock
• Wood buttons
• Fake flower bouquet
• Hot glue
• free Silhouette cut file

I decided that I didn’t want any two flowers the same but still similar. To do that I simply selected my paper out of a themed book that you can purchase at hobby stores or even Walmart. Using your free cut file, cut the shapes of your flowers out. Now I have this set up to cut two of each thing. My initial plan was to make two flowers, both different, by switching the alternating color order. My Silhouette however had other plans as it kept messing up cuts and I had to sometimes cut an extra page just to have enough decent cuts for a single flower. Ugh.

Starting with your smallest piece first, fold all of the petals inward and then pop them upward as you go back around. Repeat for the next smallest round of petals.

For all of the petals from here on out, fold the petals in just as you would, and then as you bring each petal back out, use something round (a pen, a crochet hook, anything) and fold the card stock around it to make a gentle curl.

Start gluing your flowers together with the button obviously going into the center.

Next, glue the petal rounds into the one just larger until you get to the size you desire.

You can go all the way through to make big flowers or you can stop and make smaller ones.

Your flowers can be used as embellishments for paper crafts or glued directly onto a craft project or you can turn them into a bouquet. Purchase a cheap bouquet of flowers from the dollar store or even Walmart. You’ll want your flowers to have pieces like this on the backside of them. The flowers themselves are going to be tossed or you can use the petals for another project. Take the flowers apart, saving the green pieces from the backs.

About 1/4 to 1/2 inch from the end of the stem, fold the wire over.

Place the green plastic bit onto the wire and hot glue together like so until set.

Add another dollop of glue onto the plastic/wire stem and hold onto the back of your flower. Hot glue hurts when it sticks to you so I suggest using something metal to keep it away from you. FYI, hot glue doesn’t stick well to metal so you can peel it right off.

Using the color-coordinated paper from a single book, my flowers are all different but still go together well.

Rather than making myself make each flower the same size, I stopped when I thought it seemed right to.

This means mine are all different sizes but even as a motley crew they all go together perfectly well!

Allison

A crafter since her earliest years, Allison spends a little time every day making something. She crafts, sews, paints, glues things onto other things, and is a firm believer that a life spent creating is a life worth living. Visit Allison’s blog, Dream {a Little} BIGGER.