DIY Spring Decoration: Paper Flower Shadow Box

I started out my illustrious crafting career 🙂 in paper. Scrapbooking, specifically. Paper crafting is still my happy comfort zone. Today’s project uses some beautiful cardstock to create a spring decoration piece that can easily be adapted to fit the color scheme of your own home. Spring brings flowers, and I love flowers! I love incorporating them into my projects.

Supplies needed to make your own paper flower spring decoration:

• 5×7 Unfinished Wooden Shadow Box.
• Tim Holtz Kraft Core Cardstock.
• Dry Floral Foam.
• Cloth Covered Floral Wire.
• Mini White Picket Fence.
• Silhouette Electronic Cutting Machine (or various flower shaped craft punches).
• White Chalk Paint (or color of your choice).
• Hot Glue Gun.
• Pliers.
• Adhesive Gems (for flower centers).
• Fringe Scissors.

I cut all of my flowers using my Silhouette (electronic cutting machine). I used the following cut files from the Silhouette online store.

• Tulip #56341.
• Daisy #42097.
• 5 Petal Flower #52888.

Paint the wood shadow box frame.

Resize the Tulip and the Daisy to 2″. Resize the 5 petal flower to 1″. If you space the flowers together in color families, you can cut all of the flowers for this spring decoration with one pass through your machine! I love easy.

The cardstock in the Tim Holtz Kraft Core line was a perfect palette for my home. Choose the colors you like for your project. I used three Tulips, three Daisies, and 8 5-Petal Flowers for my shadow box.

Once the flower shapes are cut, sand the cardstock to bring the core color forward (the kraft color that you see in the photos), and then you can begin assembling them.

The Tulip shape will require one center piece, one stamen piece (yellow) and two outside petal pieces per flower.

Assemble the tulip by gluing the petals of the center piece together, with the petals barely touching each other.

The finished center piece (photographed left) should resemble a cup shape. I used hot glue as my adhesive of choice. Be careful that you don’t use a lot of hot glue for this, or it will burn your poor fingers!

Adhere the outer petal pieces to the bottom of the center (cup) shape using hot glue.

Adhere the stamen (yellow) piece to the center of the flower. This piece you will just want to fold up to fit.

To assemble the daisy flower, curl the petals inward slightly to create dimension.

I used a thin dowel to roll the petals upward. Then, assemble the pieces by layering them largest to smallest.

Adhere your assembled flowers to a section of cloth wrapped floral wire. I cut all the wire into 5″ sections (the height of the shadow box) then I could trim them smaller when I started to arrange them in the box.

Cut a 2″section of green cardstock to fit the length of your shadow box. (I had to cut two strips to span the length of my shadow box.)

Trim the top edge of the cardstock piece using scissors to create grass.

Cut a piece of dry floral foam to fit the bottom of your shadow box.

Using hot glue, adhere the foam to the back and bottom of the shadow box.

Crumple the cut “grass” section of cardstock.

Adhere “grass” on top of the floral foam in front of the shadow box.

Begin arranging your flowers. I always like to work in 3’s.

The wire will allow you to bend and manipulate the placement of the flowers. Insert the large flowers first, and then fill in with the smaller (5 petal) flowers. Add leaves if you want to.  Add gemstone centers to the flowers.

Trim the white wooden picket fence to fit the front of the shadow box.

Adhere the cut fence to the front of the spring decoration shadow box using hot glue.

That’s it!

Find a spot for your new favorite spring decoration!

Shaunte

Shaunte is a 30-something, chocolate-loving, SAHM from Utah. She has been scrapbooking since 1997, the dreaded era of photos cropped with deco scissors. Since then, her work has evolved into a clean, linear, photo-focused style. Her favorite subjects to scrap are her husband and five kids (never a lack for subject material there).