How To Make Layered Paper Flowers

I finished up another decoration for my kitchen. I’m not going to tell you what it is yet, but here’s a little clue:
I know, I’m such a tease. Any guesses what it is?
I’m working on a tutorial, but realized I should break it into two tutorials because it was getting quite lengthy. Before you can make the actual project, you need to know how to make paper flowers. It’s really simple, but I figured some of you might not be sure how to do it, so I thought I’d walk you through it. And don’t worry, I’ll show you the actual project and how to make it later this week. 🙂

How To Make Layered Paper Flowers

Start with paper. Duh. You can use card stock, scrapbook paper, wrapping paper, any kind of paper.
I decided to use book pages. They are all the rage now, and I jumped right on the bandwagon. I bought an old book at my local library for 10 cents. Cheap!

First you want to cut your paper into various sizes of circles. You can use punches, die cut machines, your Silhouette, or the old fashioned method of tracing and cutting with scissors. If you are cutting by hand, you could make your shapes wavy instead of perfectly round, and that looks great too. Also, to save time, trace the circles on one sheet of paper, but cut though a stack of 3-4 at a time.

After I have my circles all cut, I line them up according to size. I’m OCD like that.
Next you want to ink the edges to add some dimension. I used black ink.

Now stack your circles on top of each other and poke a hole in the middle.
I used these:

Now stick a brad through the middle and you are finished. Cute, huh?

You can make them all different sizes, with any amount of layering that you like:

Here’s a little trick I’ve learned. If you don’t have the right color of brads, you can make your own. Using my favorite pal spray paint of course. Just poke your brads through a piece of styrofoam to hold them in place. Then spray paint them whatever color you need. I changed a bunch of lavender brads into black ones with just a couple coats of spray paint. Cheap, easy, and much quicker than having to wait to run to the store. Score!!