It seems that paper flowers are everywhere we look recently. Whether as fancy centrepieces, wedding decor, or birthday party backdrops, these delicate beauties are cropping up all over the place and we are so, so on board. We tried our hands at making our own a few months back for my wedding and got to experience that rare and glorious moment when a DIY actually works out as planned. Seriously, if you can wrangle all 3 of the supplies needed (we love a short shopping list!) you can make these flowers.
We ended up making a variety of different types of flower, but here's our how-to for our favourite, the peony:
Step 1: Gather a glue gun (and plenty of glue refills), a good pair of scissors, and crepe paper in whatever colour you'd like to work in. As far as the type of crepe paper, you're going to want something tough enough to stand up to a little manipulation. The sturdier the grade of paper, the more able you'll be to mimic the sculptural quality of real flowers. Carte Fini worked wonders for us (we ordered through their website as they have no Canadian stockists we could find) and we'd definitely recommend using them. The quality and range of colours they offer were the best we could find anywhere, period.
Step 2: Cut out a couple strips of crepe paper (about 1.5" wide), making sure to cut in the same direction as the grain (you want those little ridges/wrinkles in the paper to be moving in the same direction they would in a real petal, from the centre of the flower out towards the edge of the petal). Cut each strip in half twice and you should be left with 4 equal rectangular sections.
Step 3: Take inspiration from nature and trim the edges of each rectangle of paper until they roughly resemble peony petals. Don't worry too much about making each petal the same-- we want as much variety as possible, just like the real thing!
Step 4: Working with one of the petal strips, grasp one end in each hand, with your thumb held firmly against the paper, and pull apart in a gentle, rubbing motion. This is where the magic happens people! The motion should stretch and smooth out the wrinkles in the centre of the crepe paper, creating a natural curve, similar to the shape of a real petal. Experiment by doing the same to the very edge of the petal to see how realistic you can get the details-- have fun with it!
Step 5: Loosely roll up one of your newly formed petals to begin creating the bud of the flower. Secure with a dot of hot glue. Once dry, loosely wrap a new petal around the first, holding everything in place with hot glue once you're satisfied with the position/look. Continue in the same way, making your way around the bud, until you're happy with the size and shape. A good tip is to play around with positioning the petal just how you like it before you actually apply any glue to the paper-- this way you're not rushing to place anything before the glue dries!
Step 6: Once you're happy with the centre of the flower, repeat the process with petals gradually increasing in size. Take your time with this, so that the move from small to large petal isn't abrupt, but rather looks natural. You can tug and adjust the paper as you see fit to create a more open or closed peony.
There you have it folks! Gorgeous, fool-proof paper flowers. You can go as small or large as you want-- we super-sized ours to really wring out every drop of wow-factor ;) Depending on the scale, you may have to add additional support to the frame of your flower to keep those giant petals in place. We did this by creating papier-mâché bowl shapes that literally cupped the inner portion of our flower. Then we simply built out from there by glueing the next petals to the outside of the papier-mâché bowl structure until it was completely covered.
If you're like us and get crazy excited by how easy these are to make, go ahead and experiment with different types of flower! We made dahlias and a bunch of roses. There's really no end to the inspiration out there, so go for it-- you got this girl.
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