If you've got a stack of old book pages sitting around — maybe some watercolored ones you made ages ago and haven't quite found a use for — these whimsical book page flowers are a wonderful way to use them up. In this tutorial I show how to draw, cut, and layer simple paper flowers from book pages, then take them further into a little journaling card with stitched stems and a machine-sewn edge. The whole thing is loose, experimental, and genuinely fun to make.
What we cover
Starting from blank book pages, I walk through drawing flower and circle shapes with a Sharpie, cutting them out, and layering them into small compositions. From there I show how to build a journaling card using a piece of cardboard box as the base, stitch colored stems with embroidery floss, and finish the card on the sewing machine. Along the way there's a detour into gold spray and white paint splotches — some of which works out better than others, which is honestly part of the point.
What you'll learn
How to draw whimsical flower shapes on book pages — no templates, no tracing. The shapes are intentionally imperfect: odd petal counts, wonky outlines, circles of varying sizes. That looseness is what makes them feel whimsical rather than stiff.
Why mixing watercolored and plain book pages makes the flowers pop — colored pages give depth and variety, but the uncolored ones do something unexpected: they brighten everything around them. I use them as accent layers throughout the compositions and the contrast is worth it.
How to layer cut-out shapes into small flower compositions, including:
- Using two circles stacked at different sizes for the center
- Offsetting layers so nothing is perfectly centered
- Adding rhinestone gems or white enamel dots to finish certain flowers
How to use circles as a second element — not every cut-out needs to be a flower shape. Small and medium circles layer beautifully with the flowers and fill in the gaps when you're composing a grouping.
How to stitch stems onto paper using embroidery floss, including:
- Marking stem lines in pencil, piercing holes along the line, then erasing the pencil before stitching
- Choosing which side of the stitching faces front — the raised, loopy side or the flat running-stitch side — depending on whether the back needs to be a smooth writing surface
- Using different floss colors for each stem (I use dark green, a lighter green, and a black-and-green mix)
Why I use the flat side of the embroidery at the back for journaling cards — if the card has a writing surface on the reverse, the raised back of standard embroidery gets in the way. Flipping which side faces front gives you a flatter, more usable back.
How to build a journaling card from a cardboard box base, including:
- Cutting a piece from a Lego box (the color of the inside was exactly what I wanted as a background)
- Gluing the stitched stem piece lightly in place before sewing — just enough to hold it, not fully adhered
- Machine sewing around the edge to finish everything and pull the card together visually
- Backing the whole thing with avocado-dyed paper for a clean reverse writing surface
Experimenting with gold spray and white paint splotches on cardboard — I tried both on this card while filming. The gold spray was subtle to the point of being almost invisible. The white paint was chaotic at first but came together once I lightened my hand. Neither is essential, and I'll be honest that the flowers cover most of it anyway — but the experimentation is worth showing because that's how these things go.
How the finished flowers work across different journal formats, including:
- Loose art journal pages
- Pages with pockets and envelopes
- Plain covers
- Journaling card inserts that can be tucked into pockets and written on later
Tips & gotchas
Before you remove your flowers from their arrangement to glue them down, take a photo first. It sounds obvious but once they're scattered across the table you'll spend five minutes trying to remember which flower went where and which circle was on top.
When gluing the layers together, use only a small amount of glue — just enough to hold the pieces in place while you sew. The machine stitching around the edge is what locks everything down. Over-gluing makes things stiff and harder to manage under the needle.
For the stitched stems, apply a strip of masking tape across the back over all your knots and thread tails. It flattens everything down and keeps the back of the card as smooth as possible — important if you want the reverse to actually be writable.
The flower arrangements look best when you mix watercolored and plain pages rather than using all one or the other. The plain ones create contrast and make the colored ones read more vividly. It's a small thing but it changes the feel noticeably.
If you're deciding which side of your embroidery stitching to have facing front, think about how the card will be used. The raised, loopy side has more texture and dimension — lovely if the back doesn't matter. But if someone is going to write on the reverse, flip it: the flat running-stitch side at the front gives you a much smoother back surface to work with.
They're the kind of thing I make in batches while watching something in the evening, and then find myself reaching for over and over when a page feels like it needs something. I've got them scattered all through my current art journal, and every time I open it I'm glad they're there.
