My best friend found a tutorial for these origami flowers while looking for paper flower ideas to use at her wedding reception. This is one of the first ideas we tried out, and they looked awesome. We’re in the process of making nearly a hundred for the big day. I decided to share the tutorial with you here because even if you don’t have an event coming up, I think these look really nice in a vase any time.
The original tutorial we used as a guide is from Capitol Romance and is for making an origami flower bouquet. She has great instructions for folding the petals, including pictures, so I’m not going to go over that in a lot of detail. I will give more info toward the end where I deviated from her tutorial.
We made our flowers with half patterned petals and have solid… because reasons. You can do all patterned like the original tutorial if you want. The origami paper can be found at Michael’s, and probably other craft stores as well.
The next several photos are the process of folding an individual petal. Again, refer to the original tutorial for better directions!
We used Tacky Glue because that’s what we had on hand.
And I added binder clips to hold it together until the glue dried.
The original tutorial used 5 petals per flower. We did 6, so there would be an equal number of patterned and solid petals.
Instead of attaching the petals to a dowel, we attached them to each other and then attached the entire flower to a piece of floral wire. To attach the petals to each other, we tried several different glues and tapes. This Recollections Adhesive Tape in 1/8″ worked the best by far.
When you get to your last petal, it’s time to insert the wire (preferably 18-gauge). Again, we experimented with this and this method worked the best. You can definitely use green floral wire (since we’re making so many we went with the plain because it’s cheaper), or wrap the wire with floral tape. I attempted this once, and found that floral tape makes me want to vomit and murder everything. Kidding; mostly.
Anyway, grab a piece of floral wire and hook the end of it like so.
Then, insert the hook down into one of your petals, using the paper to camouflage the wire a bit.
Then, use a pair of needle nose pliers to pinch the wire onto the paper. This keeps the flower really secure on the wire.
Now that the wire is inserted, add your last petal.
Since we used floral wire for stems, an opaque vase works best so you can’t see them. The wire is fairly unnoticeable, but I shoved a piece of green tissue paper into the opening of the vase which adds a bit of green and hides any bits of wire you might be able to see from certain angles.
Linking up with: Monday Funday, Sugar Bee Crafts, Ginger Snap Crafts, The 36th Avenue, Happy Hour Link Party, Liz Marie Blog, Link Party Palooza