Paper Flowers

OK, I know that many, if not all, of you have already made these super-cute flowers. I see them on layouts and cards all over. But, until last night, I had never made one myself. These little cuties don't take up much time or paper at all. In fact, you probably have scraps big enough for these and too little for much else....... what a great way to use them!

Here are my first three attempts. To start, I used a circle punch (around 2") and cut all the circles for each flower. You could use even less paper by cutting each circle with nesting punches, or if you're really good, hand cutting diminishing sizes. I am not really good, so I started with four-five 2" circles. I picked the pattern I wanted to be the largest. Then, holding all three-four of the remaining circles, I hand trimmed them all one size smaller. I choose the next largest and repeated. Does that make sense? Doing it this way made it easiest for me to get the sizes of each circle right. Anyway, in a nutshell, you need to get 4-5 circles each smaller than the one before.

After you have your circles, you can try some different techniques. I only had time to try three, but have some other ideas in mind I'd like to try later.

For my first flower, I cut the circles and then sprayed them with a water bottle. When they were wet, I tore the edges and crumpled them up. I flattened them slightly and let them air dry.

For my next flower, I cut the circles and then fringed the edges. I think next time I might spray and crumple these too. And, I think a larger brad or maybe a button would work better in the center here. I'll have to see what I can find.

My final flower was simply cut with decorative edge scissors. Then I inked the edges and used a cute button for the center. It seemed to be the homey-est of all the flowers and so I picked it for the one on my house warming card. Now, to bake up a plate of cookies and welcome the new neighbors!

Update 2:39PM-- I thought I would let you know what I used on my card just in case you wanted to replicate it. The base is Prism cream colored cardstock (I don't know the color, sorry). Then, I used a journaling card from Chemistry for the background. The flower was cut from Flirt cardstock and the brown border from Forget Me Not (both Chemistry). I added a random button from my jar. The stitching is all done with embroidery floss, using all six strands. The tag was made with Flirt and Prism cardstock with a rub-on from Jack's World. I used Making Memories red string to tie on the tag. The crochet trim was just something I happen to have an entire bolt of. I found it at a tag sale years ago...... almost evey article of clothing I have ever sewn for my girls features it and I still have tons!