The most beautiful paper tulips

Back in mid 2024 I promised myself that I would buy large quantities of tulip bulbs to plant in the garden so that I had a large cutting supply come spring. I failed. I totally forgot and when I remembered it was too late.

However, about a year ago I purchased a paper tulip tutorial from the extremely talented Christine Paper Design (honestly check out her work, its insane!!) So all is not lost. I will instead make paper tulips that will last forever!

I have fallen in love with the process to make gorgeous paper flowers. It’s a really slow process involving laminating the crepe paper, painting with multiple layers of acrylic paints, blending with pan pastel and then building and shaping the tulip. This is all explained step by step in Christina’s tutorial so do check it out if you want to learn this for yourself (this is purely a personal recommendation, I paid for the courses and I have no affiliation or receive any kind of incentive from Christina).

I love how there is no costly equipment to buy, making this an accessible hobby that anyone can try.

I started with a really pale yellow crepe paper (which I forgot to photograph). I then painted it with a much richer shade of yellow on both sides. This really helps to make the paper robust. I’m also hoping that as I’m using professional quality acrylics, they will be resistant to fading.

I then added red paint to each petal and once dry I blended with pan pastels.

I am finding that with each flower I make my technique greatly improves. The pink tulips that you can see below were earlier attempts that I made. Although they are still beautiful (I mean is there such thing as an ugly flower?) I improved so much when I moved on to the yellow/red. I did also improve the quality of the paints that I used (the pinks were made using budget acrylics v’s professional on the red/yellow) which I’m sure also helped.

I plan to make at least one new flower per week and then by spring I should have enough to fill my room with tulip gorgeousness! I do own a couple of Christina’s other courses (the pomegranates and the anemones) but I also plan to purchase the eucalyptus course so that I don’t have to keep cutting it from my garden!

I love how they add a pop of colour and warmth to the room and can’t wait to add more varieties using rich, deep colours.

Thanks for reading and I hope that I’ve inspired you to give it a try.