Fields Of Heather: Patriotic American Flag Paper Flower (step by step with free svg)

Making an American Flag large paper flower, with cricut

Two Versions. The version on the left is 27 inches wide, and has vertical slits cut in the bottoms of each petal, which allows for a better curl. The one on the right is 12 inches wide and has flatter petals. Both can be made from the same svgs - you can find the link to download that right under the photo showing how many of each to cut.

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What To Cut:

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Download the Template here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11_wenK8L0tbf9tPBk4vkg3D27L1DdSdA/view?usp=sharing

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How To Assemble

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I use hot glue to assemble my paper flowers. I use a surebonder cordless glue gun that I like a lot. It's not perfect, it leaks more than I think it should (but not too severely) but I love the base and the fact that it is cordless. See it here: https://amzn.to/2ULYxDr

I layer all of my petals on first, to get an idea of how I want them to fit, then I remove them all and glue them on one layer at a time, the largest petals first. Notice they are pretty far in on the heagon shape, they are not on the outside edge.

That's really all there is too it. I use a thin line of hot glue along the bottom of the petals.

You can see on the blue petals at the bottom how I just sort of loosely folded all of them in half for this flower. You can add more curl by curling them around a dowel, but for this, I went with just a quick rough fold - quick and simple.

Then add the centers - just one glued on top of another, and the stars on the blue petals.

It's really quite quick and easy to put together, the longest part of making this is cutting all of the pieces. For the larger flower, I cut just one of each size petal, then use it as a pattern to cut the rest by hand. It's much quicker to cut the larger petals by hand then to feed all the mats into the cricut. But I always use the cricut to cut the centers and any detail work. :-)

What follows below is the original step by step for making the 27 inch flower. You can use the svgs from the flower above, and skip all of the templates below. For the larger petals, I cut vertical slits in the bottom to slightly overlap and make the petals curl a bit more - details are in the instructions below.

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THE MUCH LONGER
ORIGINAL STEP BY STEP
WALK THROUGH TO MAKE YOUR OWN TEMPLATE
VERSION

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The Cliff Note Version:

Paper is what I had on hand. White is old CTMH scrapbook paper, red is the bulk recollections pack from Michaels, and the blue is from a sale at AC Moore.
Hot glue works best!
I cut the templates, the stars, and the center with cricut. I used the template to cut the rest of the petals by hand - I think it's much faster that way. (Just my opinion)

Templates & Step By Step How I Did This:

This is the template I used. I started with a template for another flower (a free one - I have a long list of free templates and tutorials for paper flowers here: http://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/2018/01/making-paper-flowers-with-cricut.html ) and I added circles and triangles to get the shape I wanted.

It might not be the best way to go about this, but it worked for me.

You can just right click on the blue petal, choose save as. It will save as a jpg. Upload it in design space, click on the white space to erase it, then insert it in design space.

Once you have the petal in design space, cut it in 5 sizes. I just cut one of each size, and used them as my templates. You can cut them all with cricut if you prefer, it just takes a bit more time to load each sheet of paper.

For a 27 Inch Flower:

8 x 10.5 (3 red, 3 blue, 2 white)
7.28 x 9.5 (3 red, 3 blue, 2 white)
6 x 8 (3 red, 3 blue, 2 white)
5 x 6.5 (3 red, 3 blue, 2 white)
3.81 x 5 (3 red, 3 blue, 2 white)

To change the size of the petal, make sure you have the petal selected, then in the top tool bar, type the numbers into the boxes under the lock.

The Base

The base of the flower is an octagon. You can find octagon under shapes on the toolbar on the left. Just make one as large as you can fit on an an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. I made mine 8x8 because it was easy. It won't be seen from the front, so color is unimportant.

The Stars:

In the same shapes panel, find the star shape. I made my stars 1.25 inches tall. I think 1 inch would have been plenty. This looks time consuming, but it is really not. Click on your first star, once sized, and duplicate. Repeat until you have a row of 5. Select all, group. Now click on that row and duplicate. You now have two rows, 10 stars. Select all, group, duplicate. You now have 4 rows, 20 stars... I like 3 stars per a petal, so I made 45 stars.

The Center

Also known as the stamen.

I used this one:

Upload in cricut, click to delete all the white, and save.

I duplicated the image, making one 3 inches, and one 2 inches. Then I cut three times - once on red paper, once on blue, once on white, for a total of 3 3 inch centers (one of each color) and 3 2 inch centers (one of each color).

Now you have all the pieces you need cut with the cricut.

I took my templates and cut the petals in front of the tv.

Cut 3 of each size template in Blue, 3 of each template in red, and 2 of each template in white, for a total of 15 blue, 15 red, and 10 white.

Assembly:

I don't measure or use any special tools, which may be why my flowers never look quite as nice as a lot of the others I see! But these projects already test my patience... so I just do what I want. I lightly rolled the sides on all the petals, then cut slits up the centers. Then I overlapped the slits and glued.

Apparently I did not take photos of the next steps... but it's basic layering. Start with the largest petals, place one blue one on each of the 3 top left sides of your octagon. Then alternate red, white, red, white, red. Once that layer is done, start with the next largest size... and work your way to the middle.

Now I haven't actually tried it yet, but I have read that you can spray these with hairspray, wait 24 hours, then spray with a Krylon clear coat spray paint to help them to hold up on a front door.