Sakura

Cherry blossom season typically starts end of March/early April and lasts for about 2 weeks. I haven’t had the chance to visit a Cherry blossom festival yet so in the meantime, I make my own cherry blossom season by making these flowers and hanging them around my office! You can use Hot glue, Elmer’s CraftBond Extra Strength glue stick, or tape to assemble this project together. I used a hot glue gun because I am impatient and wanted it to be glued quickly haha… Pre-cut DIY kits are available in our shop at www.AlexandCandy.com

Step One: Glue the petal “legs” together, left over right. Do this for all 5 large petals and all 5 small petals.

Step Two: Glue the large petals to the dark pink center piece cherry blossom.

  • Cherry Blossom Center
  • Attach large petals to center cherry blossom
  • Attach small petals on top of the large petals

Step Three: Glue the second dark pink center on top of all the petals.

Step Four: Glue the 2 layers of stamen flower centers on top of the dark pink center. Curl them and style them however you like before gluing them down.

  • Stamen layer one
  • Stamen layer two

I have two variations of the cherry blossoms. One is a cleaner petal and one has a more ruffled look. Both variations are available in the shop.

The next step? Design your own flower!

It’s pretty easy to make your own flower. All you need is to draw your own petal and make 10 copies of it to make a 2 layer flower. Try different shapes and see what you like. I did a bit of googling to see what cherry blossom petals looked like and along the way I saw a lot of comparisons between a plum blossom and a cherry blossom so I decided to make both! The short version is cherry blossom petals are narrower and have a dip in the middle of the petal while plum blossoms tend to be rounder and do not have a dip in its petals. Here’s a video you can watch if you want to learn a little bit more: https://youtu.be/fmfIVN8–dU

source: https://www.klook.com/blog/hanami/

You can design your petals by hand with pencil and paper or in a digital program like Procreate, Photoshop, or Illustrator. These designs were done in Illustrator by drawing out a single petal and then repeating it in a circle using “radial repeat”. This is an option you can find under Object -> Repeat -> Radial. For a step by step walk through on how to do it in Illustrator, check out this tutorial on Youtube: https://youtu.be/u-yiEfYX3O8 Drawing each petal by hand could also produce a unique and natural look as each petal in nature is varied.

These are the petals I made in Illustrator which I then repeated in a circle to see the full flower design.

Happy crafting!