What materials to get as a beginner?

What materials do you need to make paper flowers?

It can be difficult to know what you actually need. BUT I've made it easy for you: here's a list of what you'll need to make paper flowers! :)

NOTE! it says on each of my tutorials what materials you need for the specific flower. You can see the material lists before you buy the tutorial - it is always on the last picture :)

Need to have:

- Scissors, preferably small sharp scissors approx. 12 cm long

- Glue gun, preferably a small one that doesn't get too hot. 

- Tacky glue - ordinary white hobby glue. I use Alleene's Tacky Glue and many also like Anita's Tacky Glue. The glue should be quite thick and dry up transparent

- Crepe paper: you can use any crepe paper you have! But if you are going to buy some crepe paper for the first time, I would recommend investing in the following:

180 grams of Italian crepe paper: (colour codes are for Cartotecnicca Rossi papers) A roll of white (e.g. no 603), yellow (e.g. no 17E5) and olive green (e.g. no 612) . I use this thick paper for the center of the flowers and for green leaves and stems. You can buy more colors if you also want to use the thick paper for the petals of the flowers. Sometimes I use burgundy paper (no 588) to color other paper with, and it can also be cool to have a roll of black (no 602) and a roll of gray (e.g. no 604) if you want to make dark centers.

90 gram crepe paper: (colour codes are for Cartotecnicca Rossi papers) A roll of white or cream (e.g. no 352) + any colors you like! I usually use yellow (no 372), red (no 392), coral (no 382) and orange (no 370). I use this thinner paper for petals. Don't buy too many colors for a start - you can easily color the paper yourself!

- A brush. To distribute the tacky glue, so use a cheap or old brush, as the glue will stick to it

- Wire. If you have ordinary thick and thin wire lying around, this can be used just fine. However, it is nice to have " floral wire ", which is steel wire covered with paper, e.g. in size 20 for stems and size 26 for inside leaves

- Wire pliers. To cut wire, e.g. this

- IF you want to color your paper , you can buy these in supermarkets: liquid food coloring in yellow, green and red + regular instant coffee + chlorine (detergent) to bleach the paper (can be omitted! chlorine is toxic, so use it very sparingly and remenber gloves and good ventilation)

Nice to have:

- Doublette crepe paper / German double crepe paper - I mainly use white and olive green, and usually color other colors myself. It can also be nice to have a fold of doublette in yellow and in red or cerise. Doublette crepe paper can sometimes be purchased on Etsy. 

- Spatula for spreading tacky glue - I use this Catalyst by Princeton 04 mini spatula - it's MUCH easier to spread glue with the spatula than with a brush :)

- PanPastel (dry pastel paint) - I mainly use light green (no. 220.5), yellow (250.5), army green (no. 220.03) and red-brown (340.1)

- Watercolor paint to paint fine details on the paper flowers. I have e.g. this one - but of course you can also buy watercolor paints of better quality, e.g. from Schmincke . You don't need a lot of colours: a dark brown, army green, yellow, blue and red/pink will do, if you can mix other colours yourself. You will also need a medium-sized watercolor brush, e.g. size 5 and a tiny little brush, e.g. size 000

- Floral tape (paper with wax on it, for stems). I like this wide, pale green floral tape from Oasis

- Watercolor ink to color the paper with - I use e.g. ink from the brand Ecoline but other types of watercolor ink can easily be used. I usually use ink in the colors yellow, green and pink, and sometimes in the colors blue, red and black. The ink should preferably be "transparent" and not "muddy". Ink that is not transparent it might add a layer on the outside of the paper, whereas transparent ink will penetrate more into the paper