Guest Post: Paper Flowers by Katie Wade of Lemon Jitters

My dad passed away last week and I am in Texas for his services. I’ll be back later in the week, but for now I have a fun project to share with you thanks to Katie Wade of Lemon Jitters. Katie was one of the winners last Fall of one of my big blog giveaways and I found myself instantly smitten with her charming personality and crafting style. I asked Katie if she could help me out while I’m gone by sharing a project. I hope you’ll welcome her by leaving a kind comment and checking out her lovely blog. Thank you everyone. -Cathe

Paper Flowers by Katie Wade of Lemon Jitters

Hi there, JSIM readers! I regularly craft over on my blog, Lemon Jitters but I’m so glad to be joining you guys today. I’d like to share a paper craft that I’ve been working on. I am making a paper flower bouquet for a friend’s wedding. I’m using my Cricut to cut out the petals for that (and you can check out my blog for updates in the near future).  So I started thinking about an easy way to make flowers without an electronic cutting machine. I’m pretty happy with the results and can’t wait to put them on my desk at work tomorrow!

You will need:

• Circle craft punch (I used a 2 inch)
• Various papers
• Scissors
• Abit of tape (any kind will work)
• Glue or glue dots

After you cut out lots of circles with your punch, you will need to trim them into pizza shapes (or pie shapes, if you’re the kinda gal with a sweet tooth). These are your petals. The amount of petals you need will depend on how big you want your flower and how many layers you want. I made about 20 pieces for a 3-4 inch flower with five layers.

Next, take one of your circles (I actually used a smaller circle in the photo – any size will work), and cut a slit in it. Then pull the two ends together and tape the seam. This should form a little cone. This is the base of your flower and really the most crucial aspect of 3D flower making. Oh – I’ll tell you a secret – the second time I  made a base, I ran the circle through my Xyron sticker machine (which I won in a giveaway right here on JSIM!), and it worked really well. Plus, I didn’t have to use any glue on my first layer of petals!Put a bit of glue or glue dot in the bottom of your flower base. I used glue dots because they are easy to use and provide a little pop-up action for my flower petals. If I had actual pop-dots, I would have used those to make my petals look more realistic. Start placing your petals down into the base. Two-three petals fit on one glue dot. I bent my petals to add dimension.As you are adding layers of petals, it should start to look something like this. With each layer, I placed the petals in between the petals of the last layer so the flower would look full and realistic. I also trimmed my pizza slices down as I went along. That way the very inner circles of petals are smaller, like a real flower. No need to be precise when trimming, it will look good, I promise!See? I really love how this one turned out. I used vintage notebook, graph and textbook (Chinese textbook!) papers as well as some new notebook papers. I placed a little pearl flower in the middle (from JBS Mercantile). I also made a couple of more flowers using scrapbook paper (card stock weight). I found that card stock and lightweight paper both work well. I only used 11 petals on the blue one and I think it makes the flower look more cutesy. So, if you want cutesy – use less petals. And on the yellow flower, I didn’t even try to coordinate which print went where – I just stuck them down. And I really like how it turned out!