Paper Rose Tutorial

Last year I purchased a decal for my restroom and it had these paper roses around it:

(terrible, dark, old picture....sorry)

I like the saying, but more than anything I liked the paper roses.  I have seen them online quite a bit on blogs and on Pinterest. I made some out of felt for a wreath I'm working on and they are so adorable!  Lately I've noticed that the paper/fabric/felt rose thing has really taken off, so I decided to put up a tutorial on how to make your own. I was super inspired by the beautiful bouquet made over at Jones Design Co. She inspired me to add stems to my own flowers. You can see her tutorial here. Our tutorials show paper flowers but the process is the same if you're using felt.  

Materials:  scrap book paper (light and heavy weight)

glue gun

floral stem wire

scissors

While at Hobby Lobby the other day I noticed that they had their black and white paper flowers discounted 66%.  I couldn't pass up such a good deal.  I thought they would be perfect for my bedroom since the colors in there are black, white, blue, and green.  All I needed to make a flower arrangement was some pretty blue and green scrap booking paper.  You can find it at Hobby Lobby for .59/sheet.  

To make a rose, start by cutting out an irregular circle shape (you don't want a perfect circle).

The size of your circle will determine how big your rose is.  

 Next, cut into your rose from a diagonal.

Keep cutting in circles until you reach the center. 

When you're finished it should look like an apple peel.

Take the outer tip and begin rolling it inwards tightly. Make sure that if your scrap book paper is one sided (meaning the other side is white), you are rolling with the design going in the roll.  In this photo I'm using double sided paper so it doesn't matter.

Continue rolling until you have a tight coil.

 Then release your coil and watch your rose expand:

  

 Secure your flower with a dab of hot glue inside the end piece.  This will keep the end and middle coils together.

There you have it, one finished paper rose....sooo easy!

If you have trouble following those directions, you can always take a pencil and draw a swirl design, then cut it out and roll it.  I think it's easier to just free hand it.  

Here is a look at all my cut shapes.  Isn't that polka dotted paper adorable?

This is what I meant about one sided paper. You want the white side to show when you're rolling it so that the pattern is on the inside:

Here are my paper flowers:

But remember, I wanted to use them in a flower arrangement with the black and white flowers I had bought (see them in the background).  Initially I had them in a beige vase but then I remembered that a few weeks back I had purchased these two pitcher-style vases at IKEA.   I decided to use the smaller of the two.

After choosing the size of my vase, I knew how long I needed to cut my floral wire so that my flowers were the right height.

The one I picked up was really long.

To make the stems for my flowers, I cut the floral wire to the desired height, then folded one end in a 90 degree angle:

I added a dab of hot glue and the bent wire to the back and set each aside to cool down.

While they were cooling, I turned to my attention to my green scrap book paper.  

I flipped it over, and using my pencil, drew some basic leaf shapes.

I drew several different sizes and cut them out:

 Then I added them onto the back with more hot glue.  They also helped conceal the bent wire.

Here's what I ended up with:

As I was adding them into my vase, I sometimes trimmed the stem if it was still too long.  You can do this with a stem cutter or scissors since the wire is really thin. 

This is the finished product:

I liked the idea so much that I used it again to make an arrangement for my laundry room:

I will say that because the mouth of this vase is really wide, I had a hard time getting the roses to stay where I wanted them.  Using floral foam would have been better, but the vase is clear and that would have looked terrible. 

I added a gray ribbon to help conceal the stems:

Here they are in the laundry room:

I liked this idea for the laundry room because it adds a feminine touch and more color.  It would be nice to keep real roses in there, except I would only remember to take care of them on laundry day.  This is a more appropriate alternative.

The process for making these flowers is so easy but I will warn you that it is time consuming.  Would you ever consider adding a paper flower arrangement to a room in your home? Have you tried making these out of some other material?