By now, you probably already know that I love paper flowers: I used some in the décor for this year’s Paper Party and in the bar sign for our frozen cocktail party last month, along with a few other occasions. But here’s a secret: I’ve always either used a pre-made kit or relied on the craftiness of others to create the flowers! So when Craftsy reached out to see if I’d be interested in taking some of their classes – and sharing the results with all of you – I jumped at the chance to really learn how to make paper flowers myself through Paper Arts with Alton DuLaney!

I’m sharing some inspiration from the class below, and Craftsy is offering a very generous discount exclusively for Oh So Beautiful Paper readers (for a limited time only!) who might also be interested in taking the class! This is the first post in a four part series with Craftsy – I’m so excited to share more ideas in future posts!

If you aren’t already familiar with Craftsy, they offer a wide range of interactive online classes that you can take from the comfort and convenience of the your own home. The thing that I like about Craftsy is that you can go at your own speed and even focus on different sections of the class when you want to. So if you have a party coming up you can focus on the entertaining components first, then go back to the art of letter writing section if you’re having trouble figuring out what to say in your thank you notes. The class is yours to keep forever – so you can revisit previously viewed course materials at any time (and multiple times), and if you’re not satisfied you can return your class for a full refund. Such great features!

The Paper Arts class contains a lot of really useful information and techniques – everything from how to make paper flowers and paper entertaining ideas to the art of letter writing. Since that’s a pretty wide range of topics, today I thought we’d focus in specifically on the paper flower component of the class. Here’s a little bit of what you can expect to learn:

• methods for creating two types of flowers from tissue paper (carnation and spider mum)
• methods for creating two types of flowers from heavier card stock (daffodil and rose)
• how to layer colors together to achieve your desired floral design
• templates for the petal and leaf shapes
• instructions on building the flowers with floral tape and a hot glue gun

With fall on the horizon and the holidays in the not-too-distant future, my first thought was to use the paper flowers to create a beautiful table runner centerpiece for fall entertaining! I chose to keep my paper flowers fairly simple and small so that they would both lay flat and could be grouped together for the centerpiece, but in Alton’s class you’ll learn how to make flowers big and small.

You can click here to take the Craftsy Paper Arts class – and take advantage of the wonderful discount! You’ll learn the specific techniques in Alton’s class, but you can continue reading below to learn more about the materials and techniques that I decided to use for my project.

Materials

Crepe paper (I used hot pink, light pink, and brown)

Text weight kraft paper sheets

Scissors (I like to use precision scissors with smaller blades for more control)

Hot glue gun

Sparkly pom poms (optional)

White craft paint + paint pen (optional)

I used a mix of crepe paper and text weight kraft paper for my flowers. I love the stretchiness of crepe paper, and the kraft paper tends to run on the heavier side anyway so it was the perfect weight for this project. I started by cutting the paper down into small rectangles: because my flowers were on the smaller side each petal ended up being between 2″ – 4″ tall and 1″-2″ wide. You’ll find petal templates in the materials section of the class, but I chose to freehand most of my petals with a soft ruffly top edge for a more whimsical look.

Once you have 5-6 small rectangles, you can usually stack them and cut out several petals at the same time. The most important thing is to remember to cut the crepe paper so that the grain runs vertically along each petal and to make the base of each petal fairly narrow – which helps when assembling and layering the flowers. Each final flower had between five and ten petals. I used either small balled up pieces of crepe paper or sparkly little pom poms as the flower centers. Both were really cute! Finally, for a bit of added texture I splattered some white acrylic craft paint on some of the petals and used a white paint pen to draw lines on some of the other petals. But you can absolutely skip this part if that’s not your style!

Click here to take the Craftsy Paper Arts class – with a big discount for Oh So Beautiful Paper readers! This discount is only available for a week – so sign up soon!

Styling + Photos by Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

This post is sponsored by Craftsy. All content, photos, ideas, and words are our own. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that help make Oh So Beautiful Paper possible!