10 Jun DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS – THE EASIEST PAPER FLOWERS EVER

If you’re looking for a party decoration that has maximum impact with minimum effort, or if you want people to think Tim Walker has just popped in for a photo shoot, this is for you. These paper flowers are so easy plus they are really light, which means they’re also easy to hang.

Once you get the drift of how to make a simple one, you can play around with more petal layers and cutting strips in the petals to make shaggy flowers. This is how you make a big poppy like the one above.

Tissue paper in two colours. One colour for the centre (I used black) and a colour for the petals. You need one whole sheet per petal and two whole sheets for the centre.

Crepe paper for the contrasting inner petal. To make a poppy, it helps to choose a lighter colour than the main petal, or yellow.

A pipe cleaner

Scissors (that’s it!)

Look at the images below and the video to see how I did it. Here are the instructions…

1. To make the centre: Take one whole sheet of tissue paper and scrunch it into a loose ball. Then take another whole sheet and wrap it over the ball and gather it all together in a bunch.

2. To make the petals: Take one sheet of tissue paper, fold it in half and cut the top left corner off with a large curve. The result will be a piece that looks like a slightly rectangular semi-circle.

3. Unroll the crepe paper and cut a piece that is the width of the tissue paper, but only half the height. (It will end up being less that half the height once the flower is assembled.)

4. Stretch the top edge of the crepe paper so that it fans out at the top.

5. Repeat this until you have the amount of petals that you need. I made mine with five petals.

6. Scrunch the bottom of the petal together; try to gather it with quite even folds, it will now look like a petal. Do this to all your petals and leave them within easy reach.

7. Now take one petal and wrap it around the middle piece. Keep hold of the bunch with one hand and add the next petal so that it slightly overlaps the first, then add the next. Do this around in a circle until you have it all in one bunch.

8. Wrap the pipe cleaner around the bunch and twist it together really, really tightly so the paper has nowhere to move around. For this bit it’s helpful to have someone else to help hold it, but it’s also possible to do alone.

9. Now bend the ends of the pipe cleaner into a loop. You can use this loop to hang it from.

I strung up some string between two book cases and a picture hook then looped the pipe cleaner around the string. The petals are so massive that no one could see my dodgy string.

Photography & styling: Emma Scott-Child