DIY Paper Flowers

A collection of flower paper reference sites that will give you ideas and tips

Would you like to know some of my secrets for making paper flowers? One of my secrets for making paper flowers comes from remembering my childhood paper crafting lessons with my loving Aunts. Here's a reminder of how to make a flower from a tissue, if you need it, or if you never got to learn how to make them in the first place.

How to make a tissue flower that looks like a carnation:

Start with a 2 ply tissue. Fold it in half lengthwise (along the existing fold) and cut it in half along that fold so that you wind up with four layers of tissue. Leave the four layers all stacked together.

Now start at one end of the length and begin folding the tissue back and forth into an accordion fold. Keep folding till you have pleated the entire tissue.

Next take a piece of florist's wire, or an ordinary piece of thread or a twist tie, and tie the tissue together tightly in the very middle of the pleated folds.

Then fan out the pleats and carefully separate them to form a carnation. You can use chalks or stamp pad ink to edge the petals of your carnation, though I must admit I did not know about this last step when I was a child.

How I make paper flowers now:

I guess making tissue paper flowers when I was a child was one of the reasons that led to my life long interest in paper crafting. My secret for making paper flowers now? Paper Punches! I often make paper flowers from punched shapes such as hearts and circles, and I trim those shapes to look more like petals and leaves as I need them.

It's a lot of fun making up different flowers out of paper.

Something that helps me create new flower shapes is nature itself. I found that when I studied live flowers, I could see there were usually repeated shapes that made them up. If I looked at a flower petal, it often looked like a circle or oval shape to me, or had a little indent that suggested a heart shape. From this idea I could punch a shape that was close enough to the actual petal shape, and sometimes only a small re-shaping of the petal with my scissors would be required to create a petal that looked like it was from the kind of flower I was looking at.

It is the same when I look at the flower centres, the flower's leaves and the buds. They all suggest basic shapes to me that I can make with my punches and scissors.

Another thing that nature has taught me is that flowers are not usually entirely flat. They usually have a three dimensional shape because the petals are cupped or curved or folded or ruffled. Again, nature teaches me what to do to make my flat shapes look more realistic. I take a flower shaping tool and make shape my petals and leaves with that, often before i assemble my flower all together. It's amazing how a little shaping of the components of my flower can make it seem even more life-like.

What to do with your paper flowers once you have made them:

I enjoy playing with paper shapes to see if I can make a paper flower from them. I usually have a project in mind before I start making flowers, or colours or a theme to guide my thoughts as I make my flowers up.

I then use these creations on scrap book pages and card fronts, or even on gift wrapping or to decorate 3-d (or off-the-page) projects. It's satisfying to me to have a unique embellishment to use when I am paper crafting.

So the real secret to making paper flowers comes back to that old adage "Make sure you stop and smell the roses!" In this case, I want to change the saying to remind you to "Stop and LOOK at the roses" too. A little time observing real flowers can yield wonderful dividends for us paper crafters when making our own paper flowers.