Quilling Paper Clovers

Learn to make quick and realistic quilling paper clovers for your spring crafts or decorations!

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The holidays are over; the Christmas crafts are long done.

Let’s start looking towards spring!

St. Patrick’s Day is a pretty big deal for my family, but I haven’t made any posts about it for years! I think it’s time that I share some quilling paper clovers.

For this project, I chose Quilled Creations in Forest Green. I think Meadow Green would be great for clovers, too. It’s a bit brighter, more of a classic kelly green. Such a pretty color.

Because I wanted these clover leaves to be as realistic as possible, the 1/8″ quilling strips had to be cut in half. It’s a bit of a process, but take your time and snip slowly. The leaves just don’t have the same effect when you use the standard 1/8″ paper.

There are precut 1/16″ strips that are commercially sold, but I couldn’t find any in a color that I liked for this tutorial. Check out either Quilling.com or Custom Quilling by Denise to see what is in stock currently.

Once your quilling strip is cut, tear in half lengthwise.

You should now have 4 skinny strips.

Roll and pinch each strip into a teardrop.

For every clover, you’ll need to shape 6 teardrops, so you’ll probably want to cut a few strips in half from the beginning.

Once you have your teardrops, you can start making your clover leaves.

Simply glue 2 teardrops together for each leaf. I’d recommend using Tacky Glue here to speed up the drying time just a bit.

Now for the most important detail of your clovers!

Using a white charcoal pencil, draw a thin mark towards the bottom third of each cloverleaf.

You don’t want to skip this step – that’s what will make your plant look really lifelike!

When your cloverleaves are all marked, you can begin to glue them together.

Again, Tacky Glue will work the best for this, as you’ll need the leaves to stay together for the next step without them being completely stiff.

Now, add some dimension.

Instead of allowing your clover to dry completely flat, try picking it up once the glue as set just enough for it to be moved and place it in the underside of a quilling mold.

The curves in the mold will give the leaves some life and make them look much more natural as they dry. Plus, no two will be exactly the same!

As you can see in the image below, each quilling paper clover is a little different!

At this point, they are ready for cards or any other quilling project.

But I wanted to take them one step further!

Check out my video below to see how I made my quilling paper clovers, from start to finish, and how I turned them into a tiny potted plant!

Let me know in the comment below how you like the added video!

I know I learn better by watching videos and maybe some of you do too. I had made some in the past, but I’ve been learning a lot and I’m ready to put out much better work.

I’m planning on making quite a few more videos for both new and previous projects. Be sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel so you won’t miss a thing!

And, happy (almost) spring!