The proverb, April showers bring May flowers stands as a metaphor for a period of discomfort can provide the basis for a period of happiness and joy. In 1557 a gentleman by the name of Thomas Tusser compiled a collection of writings he called A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry. In the April Husbandry section he wrote: Sweet April showers, Do spring May flowers. And the poem lives on. In the poems honor and with the blooms of real flowers popping up all around, we thought it might be fun to create a project that is inspired by that – paper flowers. Here is another poem by Aspen King that sparked us.
In my field of paper flowers
And candy clouds of lullaby
I lie inside myself for hours
And watch, above, my purple sky
PAPER FLOWERS
It is pretty easy to buy a ready-made paper flower kit at Paper Source. but where is the DIY fun in that? Instead we made a printable template for you to make your own paper flowers. Click here to download the template that has two different flowers that can be made. We made our flowers using the Flower 2 template to create them.
First, print the template and then trace out the different sizes to make the paper flowers. For each of the large flowers you will need two of A, one of B and C. We also got paper that had similar color tones to make it feel more organic. And the C – we used an accent color.
Once the paper flowers are cut out, cut in the petal cracks to reach deeper to the center of the flower.
One way a flower can be done is to take each petal and curl it with a pencil. This creates a flower that curls back and is a little more flat.
The other way to do the flower is to pinch together the petal and fold up to give dimensions. Then glue the pieces together – making sure the petals in each piece one overlap – but instead fall on the petal cracks – alternating.
If you want to have some fun, take the curled flowers and mix them with the pinched up flowers – it creates some fun variations.
For more inspiration – we love these paper daffodils from Classic Play.
