How to Make Sunflower Ribbon Flowers

Use the colors of real sunflowers when selecting your ribbon colors.

With some ribbons and household craft supplies, you can make your own sunflowers to brighten your home. Handmade crafts add a personal touch when you’re decorating for holidays or other occasions, and festive ribbons are inexpensive and easy to work with no matter what your skill level. If you’re handy with a stapler and glue gun, you don’t have to wait for gardening season to end—you can make bouquets of golden ribbon sunflowers any time of year.

Things You'll Need

• Thin cardboard
• Compass or 3-inch circle template
• Pencil
• Scissors
• 8 feet of gold or yellow 3/4 –inch ribbon (per flower)
• Ruler
• Stapler
• 3 feet (approximately) of brown ribbon (per flower)
• Hot glue gun
• Green pipe cleaner
• Vase or flower pot with florist foam

Instructions

1. Cut a cardboard circle with a 3-inch diameter. Set it aside.

2. Cut 3/4-inch wide yellow or gold ribbons into 4-inch strips. You’ll need about 18 to 22 4-inch strips for one flower.

3. Hold a strip of ribbon and fold the two ends back and downward to create a loop that resembles a charity ribbon loop that you would pin to a shirt.

4. Hold the loop so it extends past the edge of the cardboard and staple the ends to the cardboard to hold the loop shape. This is how to create a ribbon flower petal.

5. Make more loops and staple them around the entire edge of the cardboard circle, side by side. Position the loops so they are radiating outward, pointing away from the center. The first outer ring will take about 10 to 12 loops. End it with an even number of loops, rather than an odd number, so the next layer will fit with it neatly.

6. Add a second, inner ring of loops, also radiating outward, away from the center. Position these loops so each one is centered between two loops of the outer ring and overlapping them slightly. Staple them to secure them. This second ring will require about 8 to 10 strips of ribbon.

7. Take a piece of brown ribbon, but don’t cut it off the spool. Staple the end to the center of the cardboard. Twist the brown ribbon and begin coiling it around, starting at the center of the cardboard circle.

8. Hot glue the brown ribbon in place as you go. Spiral the twisted ribbon outward until it slightly overlaps the edges of the inner ring of ribbon loops and covers the staples. Cut the ribbon off the spool and glue the edge in place.

9. Make another ribbon flower, exactly the same as the first. Lay one flower face-down on the table. Glue the edge of a green pipe cleaner to the back of the cardboard for a stem.

10. Make a spiral of hot glue on the cardboard, then place the second half of the flower— cardboard side down— on top of it, so that the two flowers are back-to-back with the edge of the green stem between them.

11. Create more ribbon sunflowers. Put them in a vase or plant them in a flower pot with florist foam.