DIY Dimensional Paper Flowers
Designer: Lisa Storms
Difficulty rating: Intermediate
Flowers are definitely a crafting staple. They seem to be that one embellishment that you can pop onto just about anything to add a little interest, drama, or pop of color. So I never tire of coming up with new ways to create them!
I would be willing to bet that you would not be able to guess which punch I used to create the above flower. Any guesses? It's the scalloped square (Square-A-Licious) squeeze punch. I came up with this technique on accident, and I have to say it is quite addicting. This folding technique creates wonderful dimension without using any foam adhesive, etc. Here's how you do it:
1. Punch a scalloped square and mark the center (just eyeball it) with a pencil. Cut from the center of each side toward the center, stopping shy of the center mark.
2. Fold in each cut as shown, folding from the center up to the first scallop. Repeat for all cuts.
3. Once folded, turn over. The folded pieces add the dimension. Snip off the middle scallop from each petal with scissors.
4. Repeat steps to create second flower. Fan and adhere at centers. Top with brad or button. Here I have also included a spiraled center by spiral-cutting a Seal of Approval squeeze punch and rolling up to adhere.
Play around with layering different sizes and colors. Once you get this technique down, you can try a fun variation using decorative corner punches. Simply cut out a 2 inch square of cardstock and deco-punch all corners. Fold the same way as above, but first snip off the corners from each cut. This avoids these corners showing through your decorative punched design. Repeat with a second flower and layer for dimension.
I knew a wreath would be a fun way to display my flowers, but I couldn't find a wreath base around the house. Instead I cut out a base of chipboard by tracing and cutting circles onto chipboard using the Super Sized Circles template and wrapped with thin twine. The flowers were hot-glued to secure.
