Easy Poinsettia Flower Paper Art {Step By Step Instructions}

Easy and beautiful poinsettia Christmas craft using scrapbook paper! 

This paper poinsettia craft is such an easy project! There’s very little talent involved here, just good old cutting and gluing skills. The only part that takes time is the cutting, but I have a solution for that too!

So here’s the thing – I love using paper for holiday crafts. I use scrapbook paper at Halloween quite a bit (paper bats!) and I’m always thinking of ways to do more with it at Christmas. 

I love paper crafts for two reasons – you can get really creative with all the fun papers out there and they are SO easy to store since they barely take up any space. (You just want to be a little gentle with them.)

For this DIY poinsettia art I gathered some festive papers:

The red and cream are the textured card stock – my favorite! Love that little extra detail.

To do this you’ll need a lot of “petals." I just free-handed one and then traced it to make a template to draw a bunch more:

These do not have to be perfect! Is a flower petal ever perfect? Do they all match exactly? No. That’s why we love them. :) Once you get one petal you like you can just trace it over and over.

The trick to cutting out a bunch at a time is to layer your sheets of paper. So I would cut two or three strips out of one piece of paper and then lay the outlined part on top, then cut them out. 

Does that make sense? So instead of cutting out one each time I was cutting two or three. It helped a ton!:

You can use a craft knife or scissors to cut these out. 

Then you’ll want to do the same thing again, this time with slightly smaller petals. You won’t need nearly as many of these, probably half. 

The combination of the large and small petals adds some dimension these paper flowers will need!

To start building your flower you’ll want to have something as a base you can glue on to. I just cut circles out of a paper plate, but anything will do:

Just make sure it’s not too big so that it shows behind the petals.

Then start making your flower! I used hot glue but regular glue would work fine. You just need a little dab on the back to make it work. I actually looked at photos of poinsettias to see how many “petals” I should use:

I put six larger ones on the bottom and then three on top. 

The flower's center is where I got creative:

I ended up using three jewels on them instead of one, to look more like real poinsettia flowers.

I only used one piece of each color paper and got eight large flowers:

To add even more dimension and color,  you could add green leaves using this leaf craft cutter. 

You can see here how I used a paper punch and scrapbook paper for the center of the poinsettia on some of them:

I kind of pulled the petals up on each one as well to give them some dimension – not a fold really, just a slight bend. I’ve folded the petals down the middle before to make them before and that makes them look even more authentic. But with this many it was going to take forever, so I went easy.

I added some little glittery jewels I found in the scrapbook area to the others:

Those are my favorites. I always say – I’m a non-scrapbooker who LOVES the scrapbook section. ;)

The best part? All of these were just a few bucks. The paper was less than a dollar (half off) for three sheets and the sparkly jewels were a few dollars with coupons.

OK, so my favorite thing about these is you can do whatever you want with them – to use them as ornaments just tuck them into the tree, no string needed! You could hot glue twine or ribbon to the back and turn them into a garland. Stick tape to the back and put them on windows, mirrors, whatever. Or make a bunch and create a paper wreath with them – the possibilities are really endless!

I ended up sticking them inside the Goodwill shadow box frame I also used for my fall printable art. I turned it on it’s side and it’s instant holiday art:

I love how these paper poinsettias turned out! They are so versatile and they take up next to zero storage space! Major score.

These paper flowers would make a gorgeous poinsettia wreath as well!