Bring a touch of nature to your home with crepe paper poppies! These delicate, vibrant blooms are super easy and fun to make, the perfect craft for beginners and seasoned crafters alike.
Follow our simple step-by-step tutorial and learn how to transform stretchy, textured paper into these whimsical blooms. In no time at all you can create a whole bouquet of DIY flowers that will never wilt or fade. So grab your supplies, and let’s get started on this fun and creative project!
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How to Make Crepe Paper Poppies
Materials:
- Crepe paper (sage green, sand, and red)
- Wooden ball (3/4 inch)
- 12 gauge Wire
- Floral tape
Equipment:
Watch the step-by-step video tutorial:
Instructions:
Step 1: Find what you need
- Gather your supplies and materials.
Step 2: Make the center of the poppy
- Cut a 2 by 2 inch piece of sage green crepe paper.
- Stretch out the paper to its full size.
- Place the wooden ball in the center of the paper and add a generous amount of hot glue to the top of it.
- Fold the paper around the ball, pulling and adjusting it to create a bundle that’s flat and smooth on one side.
- Cut off the excess paper close to the ball. Make sure the paper stays in place nicely, and add more glue if necessary.
Step 3: Make the frilly stamens
- Cut a 1 by 7 inch piece of sand coloured crepe paper.Make sure the long part of the paper goes against the grain. (The lines in the paper should be vertical for the 1 inch section.)
- Stretch the paper out along the 7 inch edge, as far as it will go.The strip of paper should now be between 15 and 20 inches long.
- Fold the paper in half along the long edge, and then in half again.
- Cut along the longer edge of the paper, creating a thin fringe where each piece is about 1/8 inch wide.Continue cutting up the whole length of paper, making cuts as evenly as you can.
- Unfold the fringed paper and add a couple inches of hot glue along the uncut edge.A low temperature glue gun is preferred, as glue that’s too hot can warp the paper.
- Place the wrapped wooden ball into the glue with the good (smooth) side facing the fringed edge.Begin wrapping the ball in the fringed paper.
- Continue wrapping, adding glue a couple inches at a time, creating the center of the flower.
Step 4: Make the poppy petals
- Cut a 3 by 3 inch piece of crepe paper in red, or whatever colour you’d like for the flower petals.
- Cut a petal shape from the square paper. It should be rounded on one side and flat on the other.Make sure you cut the petal with the grain of the paper, so the lines go from the top to the bottom of the petal.
- Stretch out the rounded side of the paper, making a wider petal top.
- Fold the flat bottom of the petal in on each side and twist it together at the bottom.
- Repeat step 4 seven more times, creating a total of 8 petals.
Step 5: Connect the petals
- Add hot glue along the bottom of one of the petals.
- Set the center of the flower onto the petal, holding it in place until it stays on its own.
- Add glue to the second petal, placing it so it overlaps the first slightly.Repeat until 4 of the petals surround the center evenly.
- Glue the next 4 petals as a second row, placing them in-between petals from the first row.You can untwist the bottoms of these petals before gluing them, to create a flat back for the flower, but make sure they keep their shape.
Step 6: Make and attach the stem
- Cut a 10 inch piece of floral wire. Use needle nose pliers to bend the top into a hook/loop.
- Wrap the wire in green floral tape.
- Add hot glue to the wide end of the stem.
- Place the stem onto the center back of the flower, pushing it down and holding it in place until it stays on its own.
- Your crepe paper poppy is complete!
Helpful Tips:
- These instructions make a poppy that’s about 5 inches across with a 9-1/2 inch stem.
- You can also use a styrofoam ball for the center of the flower. If you don’t have this you can even scrunch up a piece of tin foil into a ball and cover it with the crepe paper. (You may need 2 layers of paper to cover the foil.)
- If you don’t have wire you can use a pipe cleaner for the flower’s stem, or leave the stem off entirely and make the poppy into a wall decoration or brooch.
What type of crepe paper is best for crepe paper poppies?
We highly recommend using proper crafting crepe paper sheets, as opposed to crepe paper steamers.
Crepe paper streamers from the dollar store are very thin and they already come stretched out, meaning they rip easily and are difficult to work with. Plus the size is quite small, limiting the size of your flowers.
High quality crepe paper is more expensive, but the quality is worth the price. It’s very easy to mold and shape, and it retains its shape well.
What colour crepe paper poppies can I make?
We made our poppy petals in red, pink, and peach. But poppies come in all sorts of colours, like white, orange, yellow, purple, and even blue!
You can also change the center and frill colours of the poppy. Use black instead of the sand colour to make a poppy for Remembrance Day.
Do I need a template to make a crepe paper poppy?
No, we found it easy enough to cut each petal freehand. After all, nature is perfect in its imperfections, and not all flower petals are identical.
But if you want your petals to look the same, or are having trouble getting the right angle on the crepe paper, feel free to use printer paper, cardstock, or construction paper to make a petal template.
Then you can hold the template up against the crepe paper as you cut each petal. You can even stack the crepe paper and cut multiple petals at once.
Can I use tissue paper to make paper poppies?
Yes, you can also make this craft with tissue paper. Just keep in mind that tissue paper is a lot more fragile and likely to rip.
You also won’t get quite the same shape of flower since tissue paper doesn’t stretch like crepe, or keep its shape as well.
Have fresh looking flowers no matter the season with these crepe paper poppies! These charming paper flowers make beautiful homemade decorations for Mother’s Day, Easter, weddings, anniversaries, baby showers, or any other special occasion.
Decorate your space with this poppy craft, add a colourful bloom to a giftbox, or use them to accessorize a spring wreath. These crepe poppies can also be a meaningful craft for Remembrance Day, Veteran’s Day, or Memorial Day.
Here’s even more flower craft ideas:
Our book Low-Mess Crafts for Kids is loaded with 72 fun and simple craft ideas for kids! The projects are fun, easy and most importantly low-mess, so the clean up is simple!
Where to buy:
You can purchase Low-Mess Crafts for Kids from Amazon, or wherever books are sold:
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Books-A-Million | Indiebound | Amazon Canada
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