Paper Gerbera Daisy With Your Cricut

I’m back with some more tutorials for making Paper Flowers with Your Cricut!

My other tutorials Making Paper Flowers with Cricut and More On Making Paper Flowers with the Cricut

Two completed paper Gerbera Daisies cut on the Cricut Explore Air 2

have been huge hits on my blog for the last few years, so I am assuming you all would like more ideas on how to make everlasting flowers with your Cricut machines.

Today I am going to show you how to make a relatively easy and perennial favorite, the Gerber Daisy!

There are many flower files, but honestly the best flower files can be found right in Cricut Access.  Check out this wonderful cartridge, which (I believe) was designed by Lia Griffith–a practical master of paper flowers!  The cartridge can be found when you go to Images and choose Cartridges (see below), which will list all the cartridges available.  Scroll on down to 3D Floral Home Decor and choose “View all 48 Images” to the right:

Searching Cricut Access for specific cartridge/image sets

 

Here’s what you will see when you click “View all 48 images”:

View of what you see when you choose “View All Images” in a specific Cartridge/Image Set

 

To find the Gerber Daisy file, scroll down a bit; see it there on the bottom left?  Click on it and insert it into your canvas:

Page two of image listing from 3D Floral Home Decor

 

Now, when you get it to your blank canvas, you will notice the file is grouped together.  This is because you may want to resize your flower, but you have to make sure all of the parts of the file are resized proportionately.

Screenshot of inserted, grouped file for a Gerbera Daisy

I have difficulty resizing my flowers (or other files) to the size I want when they are grouped together.  Perhaps you will not.  But, if you are like me, you can use this little trick I always use.

First Ungroup the file and then stack all the parts of the file on top of each other.  Then either Group them again or just select them ALL (that’s the important part) and resize them.  (That’s a cool feature you may not be aware of…you can temporarily group pieces together so that they can be resized proportionately!  Isn’t that great?)

Here is the grouped file:

Snapshot of how to resize a Gerbera Daisy file in Design Space

Here is the Ungrouped file with all the pieces stacked together:

Snapshot of how to resize a Gerbera Daisy file in Design Space

And here is the enlarged flower:

Enlarged Gerbera Daisy file

 

Use this technique if you have trouble imagining the size of your image.

Now it’s time to cut your flower parts out.

You have a choice (of course!) in the material you use to cut out flowers and that choice does matter.  Thankfully the Cricut can handle just about anything you can dish out–card stock, vellum, text weight paper, poster board and even crepe and tissue papers!  I’ve always used card stock or thinner paper like text weight, but I have noticed Lia Griffin using a lot of crepe and tissue paper and I think I might give those a try soon.

For this project, I think I will cut out my Gerber Daisy in card stock and Cricut’s Pearl Paper, which is thinner than card stock and also has a bit of a sheen to it.  I will show you pictures of both, so you can decide for yourself which one you like.

Oh! And don’t forget about patterned paper!  Patterned paper is really fun–especially the double sided kind–and I will be devoting an entire post about pattern paper options as soon as my recent paper purchases arrive.

And here’s a a screen shot showing how my Cricut has laid each mat out by color and of cutting:

Snapshot of Mat 1 of 3 of our Gerbera Daisy

Once all your pieces are cut, it’s important to remember to remove them from your mat carefully or you might rip one of the layers, like I did! Oops!

Torn pieces of Gerbera Daisy

Take all your carefully removed pieces, grab your glue and head to your work table to assemble the flower.  The Gerber Daisy project has little tab cut outs on each of the flower leaves and also on the green leaves.  Gluing the tabs on each of the pieces are going to give your flower its 3D feel and make it more like a real flower.

Tabs glued on each piece of the Gerbera Daisy

Once the glue is set on each tab, you will then stack them by order of size and attach the pieces together with glue or, in some cases, foam dots.  It’s helpful to look at a picture of a real flower when assembling any paper flower.

Card Stock Version

Cricut Pearl Paper Version

So what do you do with a completed flower?  Well, you’ve got a few options.

If you want to use it in a bouquet, you can attach a stem.  I’m not sure if they are still available, but I purchased a bunch of cool stem packs from We R Memory Keepers at Michael’s a while back.

If using for a wreath, no stem is needed, but you may need to make more in different colors to fill your wreath.

I’ve also seen paper flowers being used in some pretty unique home decor projects, such as topiaries and shadowboxes.

So essentially it’s up to you what you want to do with your completed flower.  I hope you have a blast making these and come back again soon…other flowers to come!