Paper Plumeria Flowers

Plumeria flowers are the ultimate tropical flower and now you can bring a little bit of vacation mode home with you with this paper plumeria template.

I have fond memories of plumeria flowers. On our honeymoon in Bali, I had booked just a regular room at a beach resort because I thought the suites were outrageously priced.

Somehow, when we got there, they decided to upgrade us for free to the villa. Maybe they had a slow week. This was the only time in my life I got to stay in a villa, with a private pool!

Room service would sprinkle these little flowers all over our bed every day after cleaning. They would only last a day or so but while they were fresh, they looked picture perfect.

I wanted to recreate a version of that flower that would last a little longer.

It’s not quite like getting them in a private beach resort villa in Bali but it’ll do for now.

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Materials for Paper Plumeria Flowers

Cardstock – Plumeria flowers come in all sorts of colors. This is a relatively simple design but I would still recommend a medium weight paper with a colored core if you are cutting it with a cutting machine. 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.

Oil Pastels – if you want to create a gradient effect on your petals, I recommending coloring in the areas with oil pastels. I have this super affordable set made my Pentel.

Glue – I recommend a polymer based glue for this project

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

Template – This paper plumeria flower template is available for free in both SVG and printable PDF formats in my free resource library.

Making Paper Plumeria Flowers

Cutting the template

I like using my Cricut to cut these templates. I use a light grip blue mat which seems sufficient for this design.

This is a super simple template and can easily be cut with just a pair of scissors. However, if you are going to make a bunch, I highly recommend getting the cutting machine.

Coloring the Petals

I just color the inside corner of the petal with the oil pastel and then smear it out with a q-tip. A tissue works as well.

Watercolors work as well but the center of this particular template is a little fragile and the water weakens the paper and you risk it falling apart.

Curling the petals

I like to use the end of a brush or a pin to curl this petal. I simple align the brush end along the vertical of the petal and roll the paper between my fingers using the brush as a guide.

Gluing the petals

I actually tried a few different designs.; some had individual petals, some had wider petals. I ended up with this design because I like to avoid individual petals when possible because it makes it more difficult to keep the flower symmetrical.

I like the petals to be barely overlapping. I found the hot glue gun to work slightly better in this case because it dries really fast. I just add the tiniest dab on one side of the petal and then hold the adjacent petal in place for about 10 seconds.

Here’s a picture of the an actual plumeria from our honeymoon. I managed to dig up a picture after all these years. These modern camera phones and cloud storage is quite amazing. Not quite the same but paper one will last forever.