These colourful scrape-painted tulips are pretty and super simple to make—can’t beat that! The finished blooms are large, so they make eye-catching “wall flower” decorations for Spring.
They’re the first in a Spring flower series we’ll be sharing here over the coming weeks.
You can get the full set of scrape art flower templates in a value bundle here.
Since tulips are amongst the earliest flowers each Spring, the splash of colour they bring to the world is always welcome. They don’t grow where we live because it’s too warm, but further up the mountain there’s an annual Spring Garden Festival showcasing lots of them and it’s super popular with Sydney daytrippers.
Luckily you don’t need to live in a cool climate to enjoy these scrape art tulips. You can make them wherever you live!
What’s scrape painting?
Scrape Painting is a fun process art activity that yields colourful, abstract results with a textural appearance. We’ve used craft sticks but you can also scrape with squeegees, cardboard scraps, a comb, a credit card or anything that will smear paint across a sheet of paper.
Like most process art activities, scrape art is fun but messy so you’ll need some sheets of newspaper to cover your table surface.
With this project, the dried artwork is turned into tulips.
Age recommendation is 6 and up but younger kids can still do this with adult help.
I suggest printing the templates to card stock because it makes them easier to trace around, although paper will also work.
Lets get started …
How to make scrape art tulips
You will need
- Card stock
- Acrylic Paint
- Jumbo Craft Sticks or a Squeegee
- Newspaper or similar to protect your table surface
- Good quality art paper in A3 size or similar – 1 page of scrape art makes roughly one tulip, but you could probably squeeze two tulips out of it by strategically arranging the tracing shapes. You can also mix and match the colours, using a different sheet of scrape art for the centre of the tulip to create contrast
- Scissors
- Lead pencil
- Glue Stick
- The Tulip template, available in our printables store and TPT store
How to
Squirt paint directly onto your paper in 2-3 colours that blend well. Include a line of paint along one edge.
Scrape the paint across the page, starting at the edge with the line.
For multiple tulips, create multiple sheets of scrape art in different shades. Include at least two sheets of green scrape art for the stems and leaves.
Allow to dry.
Print the tulip flower, stem and leaf shapes out from the template. Cut out the shapes.
Place the petal shapes directly over the coloured scrape art and trace around them. For the large petal, flip this over to get a second reverse large petal shape. Cut the shapes out.
Glue the two outer petals together at the base with one overlapping the other. Glue the centre petal into the middle of the tulip with the wider point facing the top.
Trace the stem and leaf shapes onto green scrape art. You can create longer versions of the stem by tracing two stems joined together. Cut the leaves and stems out.
Glue into place to complete your tulips.
All that’s left to do is hang them on the wall!
Also in this series
More Flower Crafts
- These colour-mixing tulip spinners are a STEM craft that becomes a DIY toy
- Make a posy of paper towel roses
- Here are six different egg carton flowers to make
- This flower Mother’s Day card is very cute and easy
- Here’s a woven paper basket of tulips to make
Check out more of our printable Spring crafts
