How to Make a Lovely Peony Gift Basket
Learn how to make a lovely peony gift basket adorned with six 3-D peony flowers. Use your craft cutter – Cricut, Pazzles, Scan N Cut, KNK, Silhouette, Silver Bullet, etc.- to cut out all the pieces for the project. The basket is easy to assemble. Color and shape the flowers, glue to the basket, and fill with goodies to make it ready to give to someone special for Mother’s Day, Anniversary, Birthday, Graduation or other special occasion.

Peony Gift Basket with 3D Flowers
There are two small and one medium-sized peonies on each side of the handle. The basket is made from white cardstock, and it is lined with pieces cut from printed digital papers available in the Pazzles Craft Room. I plan to fill this basket with my mother’s favorite Sees candy, and give it to her for Mother’s Day. You can fill yours with special treats for someone special in your life for a special occasion such as a birthday, wedding, baby shower, anniversary, graduation, Mother’s Day, etc. There is a matching card available in the Pazzles Craft Room, the Popup Flower Card.
Supplies
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81# text weight Stardream Quartz metallic paper
80# text weight Botanic Curious metallics paper
Watercolor pencils and water brush or watercolor paints and brush
Heartfelt Creations Floral Basics Shaping Mold
Embossing Machine
Pazzles Digital Paper or Printed paper
Assembly Instructions:
Make six 3D peony paper flowers, 4 small and two medium. The SVG, WPC, or AI cutting files include flowers in three different sizes. I used the small and medium flowers on my basket. I am placing the larger flowers that I made inside of the basket with the treats that I use to fill the basket.
Cut two medium petal layers, and two smaller petal layers, and one set of leaves per flower.
Add water color to the lower half of each petal. I used water color pencils to scribble some lines on the lower portion of each petal, then swirled a water brush pen around each petal to blend the color. You can use inexpensive watercolor paints and small paintbrush dipped in water to blend the colors.

Watercolored Flowers
Shape the Petals
Place small petals, color side down, on the slots for the small size petals of the Heartfelt Creations Basics flower mold. Place the larger petals color side up on the slots for the medium size petals. You may layer up to three of the petal layers per slot in the mold.

Flower Mold
Place the cover over the petal-filled base, and run through your Cuttlebug, Big Shot, or other embossing machine using a cutting plate sandwich that works with your machine according to the chart available at Heartfelt Creations. I used the Fiskars Fuse machine with 2 -B and 1- C adapter plates along with the cutting plate.

Use an embossing machine with the flower shaping mold.
Remove the petals from the mold and let them dry.

Let the Shaped Petals Dry
Place the dry petals on an embossing mat, medium size petals color side up, and small size petals color side down. Press firmly in the center of each petal layer using an embossing tool to lift the petals. I used the 5mm tip in a small circular motion in the center of each petal layer to add more lift as needed.

Use flower shaping tools
Assemble the Flowers
Place some hot glue in the center of the uncolored side of one of the small petal layers, and place a small faceted bead in the glue. Add some more hot glue to two of the petals and squeeze them around the bead. Add hot glue to just the bases of the remaining petals, and wrap them around the bead. Place some hot glue in the center of the other small petal layer and position the bud in the center. Squeeze the petals of this layer around the bud.

Flower Bud
Shape the larger petals in the same manner. Place some hot glue in the center of one of the petal layers and place the second petal layer in the center, with petals alternate of those in the first layer. Place glue on the bottom and around the bottom edge of the bud, and place in center of the larger layered petals.

Completed Peony
Shape the leaves using the paint brush handle, and make a valley fold down the center of the leaves.

Shaped Leaves
Place some glue in the center of the leaves and place the flower in the center of the leaves.

Peony with Leaves
Make the Basket
Cut the white pieces for the basket from heavy cardstock. The basket is formed using three sections that are glued together by the side tabs. The cutting file includes panels (shown in pink below) that will be cut from patterned paper and glued inside of the basket after it is assembled. Be sure to do a test cut on your paper before cutting the delicate basket design.

Basket Pieces to Cut
Print the digital paper, or use printed paper that you have, and cut the inside pieces, show in pink above. Glue the pink pieces to the white pieces before assembly. The square pieces go on the back side of the white pieces. Fold the top flaps forward on the score lines, and glue the pink scalloped pieces under the folder flaps as shown below.

Pattern Paper glued to inside pieces of basket.
Glue the front side of a side tab to the back of the untabbed side of another basket section. Repeat with the remaining basket piece.
Shape the pieces into a hexagon shape, and glue the final tab to the remaining open side.
Turn the box upside down, and fold the flaps towards the center of the basket.
Place glue around the edges and around the inside of one of the hexagon pieces as shown below in blue.
Press the prepared hexagon, glue side down into the bottom of the basket.
Glue the other hexagon to the bottom of the box, covering the tabs.
Gently stretch the handle pieces with your fingers into curved shapes.
Glue the printed strip in the center of the handle piece. If your patterned paper was not a full 12 inches long, center it on the handle piece. The bottom inch on each end of the handle will not be visible once glued to the inside of the basket.
Use hot glue to attach each end of the handle inside the basket. The ends of the handles should go about one inch down from the top edge of the basket.
Use hot glue on the back of each flower to attach to the basket. Glue the larger flowers on center of the outside flap opposite the handles. Then glue the smaller flowers on the flaps, on either side of the larger flower.

Finished Peony Basket

Side view of the Peony Gift Basket
Fill the basket with the recipient’s favorite treat, and delivery to someone special. They are sure to love it!
Would you like to have the FREE SVG cutting file for a smaller version of the same 3D flower that was used in this project, as well as some of my FREE SVG projects? Check them out in my FREE Resource Library.
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