How To Make A Cascading Paper Flower Bouquet

Need Help Building Your Paper Flower Bouquet?

Building a bouquet is considered a more advanced craft so be patient with yourself as you learn and practice! Eventually, you’ll master the technique, but remember to have fun with the art and be willing to try new things along the way.

PRO TIP If you need more inspiration, tips, and ideas for your paper flower bouquet, try searching for bridal bouquets on Pinterest and use those images as a guide to play with the composition of your blooms.

Download These Ebooks For Help in Crafting Beautiful Paper Flowers

Love paper flowers and crafting? Get Abbi’s best-selling paper flowers ebooks with step-by-step tutorials and templates as well as her ebook for mastering Cricut Design Space!

THE ART OF GIANT PAPER FLOWERS- DOWNLOAD

THE JOY OF PAPER FLOWERS – DOWNLOAD

CRICUT CONFIDENCE – DOWNLOAD

Step 3: Create the Base for the Cascading Paper Flower Bouquet.

Your flowers should already be stemmed and ready to go, but you will need to cut some small wire stems for the leaves. I usually cut my wire into thirds to attach my foliage.

• Cover the half foam ball in tissue paper. This is important because we don’t want any bits of white peeking through our flowers or leaves. The green color presents a lovely backdrop. But if you plan to create an all-white bouquet or any arrangement with a different color theme, then choose a matching coloring for the tissue paper.

• Glue your tissue paper closed on the flat backside of the foam ball. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just secure. You won’t even see this when we finish.

• Take the point of your scissors and punch a pilot hole in the center of the ball on the flat side at a 45-degree angle.
• Wrap the two wood dowels together with corsage tape. Use a bit of glue to hold the corsage tape in place if needed.

• Gently push the wood dowels into the hole at a 45-degree angle. Once it’s secure, add some additional glue where the dowel goes into the foam ball at the base.

PRO TIP If you don’t want a cascading bouquet, you can place the dowels at a 90-degree angle to use in a vase or other display.

Step 4: Create The Greenery.

• Curl your five large primary leaves backward with your dowel or the scraper edge tool.
• Glue all six of these leaves around the bottom of the bouquet, covering all the tissue paper flowers on that side.

• Curl your additional leaves in various directions. Glue two leaves back-to-back with one of your small stems in between. Repeat with lots of leaves in different sizes, styles, and color choices.

• Stem delicate fern leaves by adding a thin glue line at the bottom center of the stem and adhering to the wire.
• After you create a generous amount of greenery, we will add some to the bouquet to start.

• Add about a quarter of your greenery to the bouquet before adding flowers. I like to start with a few of the larger leaves closer to the edges of the bouquet base.

Step 5: Add Your Largest Flowers.

• Add in your largest flowers first. You want to space them out over the foam ball. In my case, this is the full bloom peony.

If you feel like any flowers will slide out of the foam base, you can add a dot of glue to where the stem and base meet to keep it in place. However, I recommend not doing this until you are happy with your placement. Using the foam ball base allows you to move the flowers freely as we build, so take advantage of that.

Don’t be afraid of large spacing. Once you have added in some larger flowers, you can mix in some of the smaller ones—in my case, this would be the classic peony design.

Step 6: Fill Spaces with Small Flowers, Vines, and Leaves.

• Pay close attention to all the gaps between your flowers and start to fill those spaces with greenery until it becomes difficult to see the tissue paper beneath.

PRO TIPFor a few of the more delicate vines, like the ferns, you can glue some right onto the foam ball and skip the stems altogether. Add more leaves on top of where you glued the fern to create a seamless look.

• This particular paper flower bouquet is a cascading style. Let some of your flowers hang out and curl downward. The cascading effect comes together best when you add vines hanging from the front of the bouquet. You will probably want to stem these vines so you can shape them more easily.

• Once you’ve added 80% of your greenery, begin to insert your smaller flowers. For me, I chose the buttercup as an accent flower.

• When you finish adding the smaller paper flowers, place your remaining greenery in any empty spaces. You will likely cut more than you started with to fill the bouquet—after all, we want it to look luscious and full!

Step 7: Finish The Handle for Your Cascading Paper Flower Bouquet.

Now to put the finishing touches to your beautiful bouquet…

• Wrap the wooden dowel stem with a ribbon of your choice. Start at the top and work your way down. If the ribbon slides, just add a bit of glue to get it started.
• Cut an additional piece of ribbon and tie a bow at the base of the bouquet.

You did it! Enjoy your luxurious paper bouquet masterpiece!

Step 8: Create to Innovate!

I have one final lesson for you. This is genuinely the biggest key to crafting paper flowers. Are you ready?

Have fun and play around!

Flowers are lovely in bouquets and vases, but there are so many more ways to use them! From gift toppers to hair accessories, garlands, corsages, photo props, and more! So have fun and mix things up—you never know what you might make!