Paper Flowers

Nate Burkus inspired  paper flowers

 I saw these on pintrest , of coarse, and decided to try them. They turned out much larger than i would have thought. Each flower is about the size of a dinner plate. Originally they are made from paper bags ( lunch bag size). I didn't have any that size so i used one paper bag from the grocery store to make all three flowers. One bag probably only makes 1 1/2 if i had to guess but i also used card stock paper so i would have a contrasting color. As you can see my card stock paper is white so you could do these flowers any color you want or any color of paint that you already have.

leaf patterns I numbered the back side of these so i would keep these for  all 3 flowers

The first thing you need to do is make your pattern. I made 10 leaves of each size for one flower. I tried to fit as many as possible onto one sheet of paper without wasting. it doesn't matter if you have all different size patterns on one sheet of paper. all that maters is that you have enough leaves. DON"T CUT THEM OUT YET!

Smallest leaf 

 For the smallest leaves is started at the edge of the paper and traced my pattern then flipped it to the other side of the page leaving a gap between the petals then did the same for the sides. Since this is the most visible  on the finished product i didn't want to see a bunch of glue mess and fold. you'll need 2 of these plus 2 extras .

                                                Once you have all of the leaves traced out I suggest painting them (if you are going to) before you cut them. it makes it a little easier to paint without getting it all over your hands. Now, once everything is traced and painted start cutting!

this is enough for two flowers with leaves being opposite color on one flower from the other flower.

These are extra little pieces of paper i cut out for the center of the flower so it's not empty.

large leaves after being glued.

I couldn't take pictures and glue at the same time. Start with two leaves and put one dot of glue to glue them together ( I used a hot glue gun instead of regular glue because I'm not a patient person). place another dot of glue on the top of the leaf in the same spot and add the next leaf slightly spacing it. I did this all the way around. For the second (medium leaves) you can continue to glue them on top of the large leaves or make a seperate flower then glue it to the large flower. It's up to you. If you want all the petals to line up perfectly i suggest gluing directly to the large ones.