Day 17 of the 24 Days of Christmas Crafting!
The goal for these 24 days is to give you ideas for hand-crafted Christmas decorations for your tree and home. Come back each day to try the next craft. 24 Days of Christmas Crafting!
When my family gets together, in addition to all the great times and good food, we craft. A couple of years ago, we did paper Christmas ornaments. That is when I learned how to fold these paper flowers. I have done them in florals and pastels in the past but decided to do one in Christmas colors for another craft in this series.
Materials and Supplies
(This post contains affiliate links to some of the items I used in this project. It just means that you will help to support my blog if you make a purchase after clicking the links. There is no added cost to you!)
- Paper – enough to make 60 petals
- Glue
- Optional: Sewing clips (I love these for so many crafts!)
- Optional: Decorations
About the Paper
The best thing I have found to make these is scrapbooking papers. They seem to have the right weight and they are white on one side. The paper I used in this project was originally 12″ x 12″ and I cut them down to 3″ x 3″. You can make these whatever size you want. The instructions remain the same. Only the size of the finished project changes. If your petals will be the same as the ones in this project, you will need 30 petals of each color. A 12″ x 12″ sheet of paper will give you 16 pieces of 3″ x 3″ paper. This means you need two sheets of 12″ x 12″ paper for the red and two sheets for the green.
I made these once in card stock but they take longer and require more patience to work with the stiffness of card stock. I think if I wanted to make a very large one of these balls to hang from the center of a tall ceiling, I might use 12″ x 12″ cardstock so that it would be quite sturdy.
About the Glue
I used a water-based glue to glue the individual petals closed and used my hot glue gun in the assembly. In the past, I have used all hot glue and I have used all regular glue. Personally, I like the regular glue for closing the petals because the hot glue can get too thick if I can’t get the alignment correct in time. It does take a little more time to wait for the glue to set but produces a much better finished project.
Folding the Papers
Trying to show you the folds in still images is more challenging than giving you a video. So, I recorded this video of me folding a piece of paper into the design used in this project.
After you have folded a petal, glue the long edges that you brought together in the final step of the folding. This is where the Sewing clips come in handy to hold the edges together while I move on to making more petals.
After all the glue has dried on the petals, you can begin to assemble them into the flowers.
Each flower uses five petals. Take two petals and hold the glued “seams” of each petal next to each. Squeeze a tiny dab of hot glue at both ends to hold them together. The glue won’t go “on” the seam. Add it just to the side of that seam because you have five petals to fit into that space. They don’t all touch in the very center (unless you pinch them to make them more pointed in their centers).
Add the third petal, then the fourth and fifth.
Do this for all the petals. You should end up with 12 total flowers.
Now you can attach the individual flowers to each other by gluing the petals to each other. Each petal of each flower is glued to one petal of another flower, as shown in the photo below.
In the empty spaces between the flowers, you can glue in some decorations. Other options could be greenery, Baby’s Breath, twigs painted white, etc.
Before you fill in that last space, include something to use for hanging your new folded paper flower ball.
Now it’s time to adorn your home with your new holiday decoration!
Come back each day for a new project in the 24 Days of Christmas Crafting!
You can get the patterns to all my DIY and craft projects in my Resource Library by signing up for my weekly newsletter.
Remember to pin this to your favorite holiday crafting board on Pinterest!
Leave a Reply