How to Make a Paper Straw Wreath Step by Step!

If you want to learn how to make a paper straw wreath we can show you how to do it step by step! Paper straw wreaths are fun and easy to make at home with some paper straws and materials you can find in your recycling bin.

We made one for the 4th of July in this post because it looks like FIREWORKS exploding when it’s all said and done. You can find a HUGE selection of red, white & blue patriotic paper straws on Amazon. In fact, you can find colorful paper straws for every season or holiday like Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day and Easter. The possibilities are endless once you know how to build the basic structure.

So let’s check out the 4th of July Paper Straw wreath we made in this tutorial. I love how it turned out because it looks like exploding fireworks. I’m thinking about adding some smaller contrasting paper straw wreaths to this so it looks like a larger 4th of July fireworks display on my front door.

how to make a paper straw wreath DIY step by step tutorial

How to Make a Paper Straw Wreath Supplies:

75- 80 Paper straws in a mix of red, white & blue colors and prints.

Red, white & blue heavy cardstock paper

Paper crafting circle cutter that will cut 2″ and 3″ circles

Exacto or craft knife

Clear Elmers glue

Hot Glue Gun

Scissors

Pencil

Wooden dowel

A piece of cardboard measuring at least 15” x 15” inches

Dinner plate or round object that is roughly 11’ inches in diameter for use as a template

Smaller plate or round object that is roughly 7” in diameter for use as a template

Gather up all your paper straw wreath supplies and let’s get started!

How to Make a Paper Straw Wreath

Grab your large dinner plate and place on the 15″ x 15″ piece of cardboard scrap. Outline a circle with a pencil on the cardboard. Use your craft knife to cut out the circle.

Next you’ll place the smaller diameter plate at the center of the carboard circle you just cut out. Using your pencil, draw an outline around it.

Using scissors or your craft knife (whichever is easier for you) cut out the smaller diameter circle to form a cardboard ring. This is the base or wreath form that we will glue all of the paper straws to.

Using the cardboard ring as a template, cut a ring from white heavy cardstock paper. Glue the white cardstock ring to the cardboard ring using clear Elmers glue. Your wreath base is now complete and ready for those pretty, colorful straws!

Start gluing your red, white and blue paper straws to the wreath base being sure to alternate various colors and prints (do a fully layup before gluing anything down permanently). The tip of the straw should be aligned with the center circle of your wreath form. Equally space gaps between the straws because we will come in and fill the gaps with shorter straws shortly.

Cut all of your remaining red, white and blue paper straws straws to about 3/4 of the original paper straw length and fill in the gaps in between the larger straws. You may want to throw in a few straws that are 1/2 length too to make it more interesting and less uniform. Take the time to fully lay out your arrangement before gluing down the shorter straws permanently.

How to Make Paper Flowers

Next, we will cut, assemble and glue all the paper flowers for our paper straw wreath. Using our paper crafting circle cutter and red, white & blue heavy cardstock paper we will cut out larger red, white and blue circles that are 3” in diameter and smaller circles that are 2” in diameter. Each flower requires 5 circles total so cut accordingly and plan for how many flowers you want in advance. We used 9 flowers in our paper straw wreath DIY but you can make more or less based on your personal taste.

We’ll walk you through how to make a paper flower for your wreath and you can repeat this process for all the other paper flowers. Take your first circle and fold it in half. Take that same cicrle and fold it in half again. Fold that circle AGAIN in half to get something that starts to look like the beginnings of a petal.

Take your folded circle and draw a curve with your pencil along the edge (like the photo) and cut around the curve with your scissors.

Snip the small point off the corner to form a hole along the center of the flower. Repeat this entire process for the remaining four circles.

Unfold your newly created paper flower and you will see crease lines along each of the petals. Make one cut along one of the crease lines to open the flower. This will be the first (bottom) layer of your paper flower.

For the second layer, cut out 1 petal completely off. For the third layer you’ll cut 2 petals completely off. From the fourth layer you will cut 3 petals completely off. From the fifth you will cut 4 petals off.

Next we’ll show you how to give the flower three dimensional shape.

Apply Elmers clear glue on the petal of the first paper flower layer affix the end petals together. Allow time to dry per manufacturers suggestion. Repeat this process remaining 4 layers.

Using your wooden dowel, curl the petal edges outwards. Repeat this process for all the petal layers.

Next, you’ll glue the flower layers together with some more Elmers clear glue. Gently press down in after gluing each layer. Allow the flowers to fully dry according to the manufacturers directions.

Your paper flower should look something like this. You can get creative and mix and match color layers. Repeat this process for all of your remaining flowers.

Using a hot glue gun, glue your flowers to your completed DIY paper straw wreath. Before you glue them down completely, you should fully mock up your arrangement to your liking. If you have some pretty red, white and blue ribbon, you could add it before you glue on the paper flowers.

Now that you know how to make a paper straw wreath you can make one for each holiday or season like Halloween, Christmas, Easter or Valentine’s Day. Check out some of the other paper straw wreaths we found that you could also try using this same easy method!