At the height of summer, blossoming bushes and flowers are everywhere! If you’re eager to capture the beauty and keep it from wilting, paper flowers are your best friend! This arrangement is full of peonies and dogwood blooms and made completely of cardstock. You can easily customize the flowers to the colors of your choice!

Supplies Needed:

Step One: Formatting the Designs

1. For the peonies, open Design ID #289155 in Silhouette Studio®. Cut the flower petals out of one color, the center pieces in another, and the leaves in green. We cut out enough for 7 flowers total in varying warm colors and with slight size variation.

2. For the dogwood flower, open Design ID #95013 in Silhouette Studio®. Adjust the size of the file to be 4 inches wide.

3. For our flowers, we actually only need 2, 3-petal designs for each blossom. We used 15 flowers, so cut 30 3-petal designs out from white paper (you’ll need two sheets of white 12-by-12-inch paper), and 30 circles (15 big, 15 small) from yellow paper.

4. For the leaves, insert Design ID #21378. Ungroup the design by right-clicking and selecting “Ungroup” and delete the the leaves with the small stems.

5. Then select the leaf and open the Modify panel and “Divide” the leaf to separate the inner and outer line. Keep the single inner line, adjust the size to 1–2 inches tall and duplicate the leaf to fill the page. Cut two pages of leaves.

Step Two: Assembling the Flowers and Leaves

1. For the Peonies, curl each petal with a pencil so that each side turns inwards, like a cup.

2. Then add some detail with paint if desired. Glue the petals together in the center, going from small to big.

3. For the center, you also want to scissor curl the stamens up and in so they make a cupping shape.

4. Then glue them together in the center, going from small to big. Add a contrasting dot of paint to the center if desired.

5. Glue the center to the middle of the flower.

6. Score the leaf boughs down the middle of the leaves and glue to the base of the flower, along with a wire stem

7. For the dogwood flowers, curl the petals with your scissors, some curling up and others down. Layer two flowers over another and glue together. Layer the small and large centers and glue together. Glue the center to the middle of the flower. Glue wire stems to the base of the flowers.

8. For the leaf boughs, score the leaves down the middle and glue to a wire stem.

9. Arrange all your flowers and leaves into a vase or pot, placing a piece of green floral foam into the base to help keep the flowers in place.