Last updated on May 9th, 2019 at 12:48 pm
Make these giant paper flowers using my template (hand cut or SVG for the Cricut) and then get my best tips and tricks for making them easily! Perfect for giant paper flower backdrops, beautiful home decor, and festive party decorations.
This post is in partnership with JOANN.
Tissue paper flowers have long been my go-to party decoration, but lately I’ve been experimenting with card stock flowers. Both materials have their benefits. Tissue paper flowers can be made quickly, easily, and generally super inexpensively. Cardstock flowers take more time but really pack a polished punch, if done well. I recently designed a simple template to make giant paper flowers. As I was designing and testing this template, I found a few tips and tricks that made creating these so much easier, so I thought I’d share those with you today!
These giant paper flowers are part of my partnership with my favorite craft store, JOANN. All of the paper I used in this project is Bazzill and can be found on JOANN’s website, as well as in-store (selection may vary). I like using a gradient to create these flowers, but of course you can use whatever colors you’d like! I think they would also look really cute in different subtle patterns. The colors I used are:
Pink Flower
Teal Flower
The leaves are my absolute favorite green: Granny Smith.
Download the Giant Paper Flower Template
This tutorial has two different files—one SVG file to cut the flowers using your Cricut or other cutting machine, and a PDF that you can use as a template for tracing and cutting by hand. You can cut the SVG files at whatever size you like. They are sized to make a flower nearly two feet across! But if you’d like to size them down, you can make smaller versions. For the larger flowers I made, I sized the file down to about 6″ tall, to give me a 12″ flower. The two smaller ones are sized to 4″ tall, to make an 8″ flower.
Download by clicking the image below!
Assembling the Giant Paper Flowers
Once you have all of your pieces cut out, you’ll see that each petal has a slit that stars at the bottom of the petal.
Use a little craft glue and overlap the bottom to create dimension with each petal. It doesn’t matter how far you overlap—just be consistent with all your flower petals.
Once dry, you’ll glue all the petals to create the flower. Start with your largest petals at the bottom — glue in a ring on top of the circle template piece. Once the first layer is set, do the second, and so on, until you have the whole flower.
Giant Paper Flowers: Tips & Tricks
Okay okay, I realize the above directions are way too simplistic. Let’s go into detail on a few different things I did to make these flowers come together easily and quickly!
Use a Cricut
While I did provide hand-cutting templates, the best way to speed up this flower making process is to use a Cricut or other cutting machine. I used my Wisteria Cricut Explore Air 2, which is exclusive at JOANN. It’s perfect for speeding up projects like this, plus your template pieces will be so perfectly cut they will look professionally finished. And you can easily change the dimensions of your template pieces to cut your flower in any size you desire. If you don’t have a Cricut, however, I’ve provided a template for cutting by hand!
Giant Paper Flower Glue
What kind of glue should you use? I found that Aleene’s Quick Dry Tacky Glue was a good choice. It dries quickly, but not so quickly that you can’t make adjustments if you don’t get your petals placed right the first time. Even better, get the “Always Ready” bottle that stands so the glue flows down, and you’ll never have to sit there shaking the bottle, trying to get your glue to come out. That’s next on my list once I empty this bottle I currently have.
Create an Assembly Line
Like I said above, quick-dry tacky glue is awesome for putting these flowers together. I line up six to eight petals, side by side, and put a dab of glue on each. Then I hold them together, using my next little trick.
Wonder Clips are like Extra Hands
When I first started assembling these flowers, I held onto each petal until the glue set enough for me to put it down. So each flower took me approximately four days (ha!). Then I realized that I could use Wonder Clips, which are basically like having a bunch of tiny friends holding your petals together for you. Just clip on and let them sit. They do live a small indentation on your paper, but all but the inside layer is covered up by the later on top of it. If that indentation bothers you, just hold the three center pieces between your fingers as the glue sets.
Work One Layer At a Time
This probably goes without saying, but start with the bottom layer and work up. I will do a layer and then set a bowl or (as I get more toward the center) a bottle of glue or craft paint to help keep everything in place as it dries. This, like the Wonder Clips, means that I don’t have to hold the flowers while the glue sets!
Continue on until you have all of your pieces in!
It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect
Try to get your petals to line up, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. Nature isn’t perfect and neither are you! The two most outer layers have six petals, the two middle have five, and the two smallest have four. The final center only has three. So there’s no way to line them up perfectly based on the row before it—just try to get them evenly lined up(ish) for each layer.
And that’s it! You can see how these simple tips and tricks make creating giant cardstock flowers a lot less daunting. Do you have any tips and tricks for assembling big projects like this? I’d love to hear them in the comments!
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Cori George
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Barbara Warner says
Cori,
You can be sure I’m downloading this one! As a matter of fact, I downloaded them on cardstock to cut out for my templates and will be hitting up Walmart, JoAnn’s, and Michael’s for pretty colors to make the flowers. I plan on putting a couple in my living room in a large picture frame (that I decorate seasonally) and some for my bedrooms. They are gorgeous! Hope mine turn out as well. Thanks!
Ellyn says
I received a file but it did not include the flower svg. Please help. Thank you!
Autumn Blue says
what do you do once the file is downloaded? is there any other step before uploading it? its on my computer but will not upload! plz help…
Liz, HLMS Reader Support says
Once you’ve downloaded the file, the file type is .zip. This allows multiple files to be located in one folder when downloaded.
You will need to ‘unzip’ the files by double clicking on it and then the individual files will show. From there, you can upload one file at a time to Design Space.
I hope this helps!!
Liz, HLMS Reader Support
Cordelia Randall says
Very nice. Thanks
Cara says
Have you ever done this with double sided tape or tape dots instead of glue?
Cori George says
I haven’t—I find glue works the best. I’m not sure the dots would be strong enough—there’s a lot of pressure on the paper!
Thairis says
I have subscribed a couple of times and never received an email. Please advise :)
Amy Motroni says
Hi there,
Can you check your SPAM folder?
-Amy, HLMS Reader Support