Paper Buttercup Flower

Domestic Heights

6 years ago

The common buttercup is actually part of the ranunculus flower family but looks nothing like their other multiple petal layered cousin.

I guess if you look closely at the stamen of the buttercup, it looks like a bunch of underdeveloped petals so, from that perspective, I could see a connection.

I mostly just want to wanted to do another project in this flower family so I probably spelling the word “ranunculus” over and over and again because I can’t seem to remember the sequence of n’s and u’s for the life of me.

My son is learning sight words in school right now and I get frustrated at him because he can’t seem to remember the simplest of words. I probably should be too hard on him given my spelling abilities have regressed to a second-grade level with all this auto-correct and grammar checks in every device I use. (You’ll have to excuse all the grammatical errors in my tutorials, I’m just mostly too tired to prioritize this above just getting the article out. I will eventually get around to correcting everything.)

But I digress…

Back to buttercups. This paper flower was incredibly easy to make, you really can’t mess it up. It’s simple but quite cute, just like the real thing.

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Materials for Paper Buttercup

Cardstock – I used a medium weight (65lb) cardstock for this project. Here are some of my favorite brands:

Assorted Starter Pack – Basic assorted colors, great starter pack, perfect weight for most papercraft projects
Cricut Joy Insert Card Packs – You don’t have to use these with the Cricut Joy, they are nice material kids for cardmaking.
Cardstock Warehouse Brand on Amazon – I love the quality of all the matte-colored cardstock with Cardstock Warehouse. It is my go-to brand for individual matte colors that I might need
Poptone Assorted Variety Pack – This is the perfect peppy assortment of colors of heavy cardstock. It’s a heavy cardstock assortment with colors I actually use frequently for cardmaking.
Seasonal Assorted Variety Pack – This is a slight variation on the Poptone assortment and has a quite few neutrals that complement almost any accent color.
Stardream Metallics Line – For paper crafts, the Stardream line is the go-to for a metallic shimmer finish. It is the perfect sheen to make any project pop. The core is also colored is which hard to find for metallic paper.

Cutting Machine – I use a Cricut. Check out my recommendations for Cricut machines and accessories for beginners for more info.

Template – This buttercup template is available in both SVG and printable format for free in my resource library.

How to assemble a paper buttercup

Step 1: Cut all the petals and layers from the template

I used my Cricut with the blue light grip mat for this project.

The default template makes a flower that is about 3 inches wide which I know is way bigger than the real thing but I injured my thumb the other day and had trouble making it smaller. You will have to resize it for a smaller more realistic flower.

Step 2: Curl the petals

For the individual petals, I just rolled the out edge inward with a pen. I then curled the base with a scraper.

For the stamen layers, I used a scraper to curl the outer edges. Be sure to hold base of the petal firm as you are doing this or you risk pulling the petal off altogether.