Paper Flowers Tutorial

You all know that I am totally addicted to fabric...no secret right?
What you might not know is I also have a love affair with pretty papers!
Last week I taught a 2 day workshop at Quilted Works in St. George, Utah.
I made these paper flowers to go on top of the little take home packages that I made for each of my students as a thank you.

First I cut 5 circles out of scrapbooking paper....all decreasing in size.
The paper that I used is by My Minds Eye.
I used a die cutter because I needed 30 sets but you can easily just make circles using a circle ruler or a compass. They don't have to be perfectly round either. Your largest circle will be slightly larger than your finished flower. Poke or punch a small hole in the center of each circle.

I laid my circles out on my cutting mat and spritzed them with water. I didn't saturate them...just a fine mist. You can see that the paper will start to curl up a little from the water.

I used a little misting sprayer by Ranger (sold with scrapbooking supplies) but you could just use a regular spray bottle and turn the top to mist instead of spray.

I turned my circles over and sprayed them again.....(you can see Kassidy here helping me with the spraying!)

Then I scrunched up each circle into a spitball!...

Because some of the circles looked similar in size when wadded up, I laid them out in order of size so that I could easily keep track.

I let them dry a little for about 5 to 10 minutes...depending on how wet they were.

When I unfolded them, I still wanted to work with them damp but not too wet because wet paper tears easily!

I started with the large circle and unfolded them one at a time, stacking them on top of each other according to size. I didn't press them out flat but kept them still wrinkled and with wavy edges.....

Like this.

See the side view? You want your circles to be this tall and not smashed down.

You will need a brad for your flower center... of course I chose to use one with bling! ( by Making Memories)

Carefully.....(your paper is still a little damp)... put the brad through all of the holes and close the back of the brad.

Top view...

Side view...

View of 30 flowers!

I laid my flowers out to dry completely.

Remember that however puffy and scrunched up they are is exactly how they will dry....so shape them how you want them at this point.

I decided to make leaves to go on the side of my flowers. I used a leaf punch by Fiskars.

You could easily just cut a couple of leaf shapes but the punch worked out better for me because I needed 60 leaves.

I spritzed both sides of the leaves just like I did the circles.

I let them dry a little bit ....I didn't make spitballs out of them.... I just scrunched them up a little and let them completely dry before adding them to the underneath side of the flowers with glue dots.

These flowers are really fun and so easy to make! I used these in place of a bow for gifts and you could do the same thing....they would also make adorable magnets or pins.

I have made smaller ones before and glued them on the end of a clothespin to use for clips on my message board.

I'm also in the middle of another cute project using these flowers...I'll show you when it's complete!

How about you?

Do you like playing with pretty papers?

I've joined the "Free Pretty Things" linky party...go and see!

You can find other pretty things there by clicking here.