How to Make Easy Rolled Paper Flowers
Easy rolled paper flowers have always been something I’ve wanted to try – it’s been on my “to-do” list for a while now.
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These rolled paper flowers look complicated, but you won’t believe how easy it is to make them using your Cricut. Here are my step-by-step directions on how to make these easy rolled flowers. You’ll be able to make lots of them in no time. I started out with roses. Roses are an easy rolled paper flower to start with, and who doesn’t love roses?
Rolled flowers have so many uses – they make great decorations. Put them on walls or on posters. You can add them to wooden signs or tiles. They make great table decorations at parties or showers. Little ones can be used to embellish cards. The first project I made with them are using rolled flowers in shadow boxes. I’ll post how to do that on another day. For now, let’s just make the roses. While in this post, I am specifically making roses, the process for rolled paper flowers is the same.
Keep reading to see my step-by-step process with lots and lots of pictures!
Supplies for Easy Rolled Paper Flowers
To make rolled flowers, you just need a few things.
things you need
- Cardstock or paper; the bigger the size, the bigger the flower. I’ve used cardstock in both 8.5×11 and 12×12. There are so many options including solid colours, patterns and even pearlized paper.
- Something to cut the flowers with – I use my Cricut Explore Air 2. There are other machines as well that can cut them. Even scissors will do (but it’s more work).
- Quilling tool – I have a Cricut one, but there are other brands as well.
- Glue – I used Aleene’s Tacky Glue, but any type of strong glue for the paper will work.
Amazon Links
quilling tool
glue
Templates for Rolled Paper Flowers
There are a variety of cutting templates that you can find online. You can pay for certain templates or even find free ones online. For my project, I used this free template from the blog, Paper This and That. You can find it here. This template features scalloped edges. There are many other templates out there – just choose one in which you like how the finished product looks.
Step by Step Process for Easy Rolled Paper Flowers
- If using a cutting machine like a Cricut or Silhouette, upload your template. Adjust to size. The larger it is, the larger the flower will be.
- If you are cutting by hand, print the template on your cardstock. You will be limited to 8.5×11.
- Cut out the template – either using your cutting machine or with scissors.
- Now the fun part! Get your quilling tool – you will see that there is a slot at the top. It’s small, but it’s there.
Insert the outside end of the flower template (where I’m pointing) and insert it into the quilling tool. So you are working from the OUTSIDE and then towards the centre.
- As snug as you can (but not super tight), start rolling towards you – that would be counter-clockwise. Keep the card stock in the quilling tool. If it falls out, just start over. Don’t worry, that happened to me many times in the beginning. As I am right-handed, I roll with my right hand and use my left hand to keep it steady and even. I use my left-hand thumb to keep it snug.
- Keep rolling. Try to keep it as even as possible. It’s not easy to keep the bottom even, but do the best you can. It’ll turn out regardless. You’ll see that mine isn’t perfectly lined up at the bottom.
- Keep going until you almost reach the end. You won’t go to the very end – you’ll leave the big part at the end. So just get close to it.
- Hang on to the rose, remove the quilling tool – just slide it out. You’ll see from above, how tight the rose looks.
- Now the fun part – let go! You’ll see it’s a lovely rose! Don’t worry about that flat part on the side – that’s the base that you’ll be glueing it down to.
- Now apply glue to the bottom of the last part (the part you didn’t roll) and sit the rose on top. You can adjust how loose or how tight you want it to look. Some people use a glue gun, but I found the wait in between each flower (while rolling them), my glue gun drips and wastes glue. The Aleene glue works perfectly fine.
- I press it down from on top to make sure all those bottom edges stick. Wait about a minute for it to set.
There you go – a beautiful hand-rolled rose! Wasn’t that easy? Don’t worry about consistency. Just like in nature, no 2 are alike. That’s okay!
I made roses using 12×12 card stock. They ended up measuring 3.75 inches across.
Consider making some easy rolled paper flowers. They’re a fun, easy craft to do and have so many uses. I can’t wait to try other kinds of flowers. Stay tuned for a post on a fun project by adding these easy-to-make flowers to a shadow box. Read about that project here.
Other Cricut Paper Crafts
Be sure to check out these other great projects.
You can make easy rolled flowers out of fabric as well! Check out my post on how to make them out of felt.
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Hi there,
I tried this and my flowers turned out super pretty! Just a quick question about cutting it using cricut – how big was the image on cricut design space (my flowers ended up being smaller than I wanted)?
Thank you!
Kezia
So glad this worked for you! With 12×12 paper, I maxed out by making it 11.5 wide (that’s the biggest you can go for 12×12) and it yielded a flower that was about 3.75 inches across.
Hope this helps.