How To Make A Paper Flower

Written by Sally_in_Wales

Here's a quick and simple paper rose to make for your best beloved, or just to cheer up a vase before the real flowers get underway.

You need:

-A sheet of tissue paper in your rose colour (crepe also works well, so does silk that has been brushed with glue and allowed to dry so it doesn't fray).

-Some fine beading or florists or fuse wire- the finer the better.

-A length of thicker wire for the stem (green garden wire is fine).

-Scissors

-Pencil

-Soft pad of cloth and a blunt item like the top of a knitting needle to shape petals with

-Florists tape is good to tidy things up, but you can manage without.

-Scrap of paper and glue for the leaf

Start by folding a sheet of tissue paper up and cut out a stack of petals, you need about 13 or so for a rose:

Next, roll two of the petals into a tube to make the centre of the flower and wire these to the stem:

Shape the rest of the petals to make them more realistic. You do this by putting a few of them together on your pad of fabric and polishing the middle with the blunt tool to dent the middle into a curve, flip them over and lightly curve the top edge of the petal in the other direction. Different papers take this treatment to different effect, crepe can just be pulled in the fingers to get the dent, my tissue was quite crisp and didn't dent quite as much as I would like. Be prepared to experiment with this stage!

Overlap three of these curved petals, making a tiny pleat or pinch in the base of each petal as you go, and wire these around the centre of the rose:

Now for the rest of the petals. We want to make an arrangement that allows you to shape the final flower into a nice open form, so fold a length of fine thin wire in half, and crinkle the base of one petal into the loop formed. Twist the wire, and add a second petal making sure it sits behind the first. Put a twist in the wire to hold this in place. Add another, overlapping it to the front this time. Keep going until you have about 8 petals overlapped and secured on your wire. Try to put a tiny pleat into the base of each petal as you go to help form the flower shape later.

Wrap these round the base of the flower, doing your best to get a natural looking arragement of petals. Tidy up the wire by wrapping a strip of florists tape around the whole base if you have it.

Almost there! We make a leaf next, you could use green paper but I didn't have any to hand, so I used a scrap of printer paper, glued together with a piece of wire down the middle:

Once the glue is dry, colour in the leaf and cut it to shape:

Wire the leaf to the stem, tidy everything up with more florists tape, and take a bit of time to ease each petal into the best position. Again, different papers or fabrics will sit differently, you will get a 'curvier' rose in crepe than you can in tissue, and gummed silk can take really natural looking forms.

Admire your flower, and go and give it to someone special :D