Make a Birthday Card with Pop Up Watercolor Flower {Free Designs}

Hi creative friends! Let’s picture this: instead of driving to the store and looking for an extra special unique birthday card, you could make a birthday card with a gorgeous, huge pop up watercolor flower in almost the same amount of time, while having so much fun crafting! Does it sound like a great idea? 🙂

I designed this handmade birthday card using watercolor textures, so it looks like a big 3D watercolor flower. If you have a printer and some paper, you can make it in less than 1 hour!

Make a birthday card in 30 minutes with a handmade pop up watercolor flower as a beautiful surprise!

I will share with you all the free printable leaves and flowers templates (download at the end), and step by step tutorial with a video on how to make a beautiful DIY Happy Birthday Day card with a big pop up flower, plus some color and design variations.

You can use these free designs to make all kinds of pop up cards and use them as handmade Mothers Days cards, thank you cards, happy anniversary cards, and anything really! Who doesn’t love a big pop up watercolor flower?

*Some resources in article are affiliate links. Full disclosure here.

Video tutorial on how to make a birthday card with pop up flower (or skip to written tutorial below ):

Materials and tools to make a birthday card with pop up watercolor flower:

Make a birthday card in 30 minutes with a handmade pop up watercolor flower and paper cut leaves

( Some of the helpful resources are affiliate links. Full disclosure here. )

There are many color and design variations to make pop up flower cards. For example, this DIY Mother’s Day card has 5 layers in the flower, with shades of blue colors. You can check out the tutorial here.

Step 1: Print and cut flowers and leaves

Print the front and back side of the flower template designs. The front side has the watercolor flower texture. The back side has outlines for cutting and dotted lines as folding guidelines. Choose the “print on both sides” option when you print, and select “flip over”. ( Not “flip up”)

free designs and printable template for handmade birthday card

Check out the video above if you are unsure of any steps. Cut the outline of each flower layer, and fold them along the dotted lines with the petal lines showing at top.

Cut the petal shape and unfold the flower layer. Repeat on all 4 layers.

Step 2: Fold and glue flower layers

cut out flower shapes for handmade birthday card

The key to this step is to carefully match the tip of each tab on each flower layer, and use just a dot of glue on each tab. I will show detailed photos. You can also watch the video tutorial above to follow along.

glue flowers for handmade birthday card

Fold flower #1 in half, matching the two tabs, fold in between the petals along the cut lines, glue the two end petals together. Repeat with the other flower layers.

Place flower layer #2 inside layer #1, fold the tabs of each layer so the end tips of the tabs matches. Glue the tabs of flower layer #1 to layer #1. Repeat with flower layers #3 and #4.

IMPORTANT: Once all the layers are glued together on these tabs, put a dot of glue between the back of the tabs on layer #1 and the back of layer #1 petals, and press together. This will help the flower open to full size.

See the blue flower example above.

Step 3: assemble handmade birthday card with pop up watercolor flower.

pink birthday card with beautiful pop up flower

There are different ways to use the cover for our DIY happy birthday card with pop up flower. You can print it out on this white card stock ( like in the pink flower version), or use it with colored card stock to create a layered look (like in the pink flower version).

green birthday card with beautiful pop up watercolor flower

I love the watercolor flower on the deep green background, so I trimmed the Happy Birthday card cover, and glued it to the green card stock also trimmed to size, and folded in half.

opening green birthday card with beautiful pop up watercolor flower

Center the stack of flowers vertically inside the card, and line it up with the folded line. Put a dot of glue on the back of the tabs and press together the cover and the flower tab. Do this on the front and back cover. Check out the video above if you are unsure of this step.

Add some leaves as final touches. You can glue the leaves to the card or to the back of the flower. It is so much fun playing with these pop up cards. Don’t you think they would make beautiful displays on a shelf or mantel?

handmade birthday card with beautiful pop up watercolor flower

To download all free templates for this card and tons of other goodies, click button below!

You may also love: DIY large wall art for $5 (frame included!)

anthropologie style framed large wall art with beautiful flowers painting

Free printable calendar and monthly planners!

Beautiful floral 2019 calendar & monthly planners

Happy creating! See you soon!

26 Comments

  1. I downloaded the svg for the blue card, however the flowers are the wrong ones, no lines for fold marks and wrong shape. What can I do?

  2. Your site never sent the email an its frustrating to keep getting sent back to the same page over an over again!!! I want to download the flower cards for my senior citizens.

    • hi susan, we send out over 80,000 emails and thousands of downloads happening on our site each week. sometimes people miss-spell an email address, or certain emails such as earthlink tend to block auto emails. maybe try a different email or have a friend giving it a try. 🙂

  3. Wow, that’s very nice. I love making gifts with my own hands and this is definitely something that I would give my mom or girlfriend. I think everyone is pleased to receive such little pleasant things. Thanks for the tutorial.

  4. Do you use special glue that dries instantly? Or did you just pause the video while regular white glue dried?

  5. Hi,

    I can’t find the template anywhere. I tried to go to the link provided but it just takes me back to this page.

  6. I was trying to make the blue flower pop up card but when I uploaded the svg to Design Space I got an error message that said “It contains an unsupported element: text”. Help! I love this card.

    • hi janie! i have not heard this problem before. i am pretty sure you can just delete the text at the bottom. inkscape is a free software that can edit svg and delete text as well. 🙂

  7. Hi Amanda, do you sell this pop up birth at card?
    Can you email me directly to my email address. Thank you

  8. Not only do I love your projects, the music on this tutorial is absolutely beautiful! What is the name of it and can you tell me where to find it? Thanks so much!

    • hi Dianna, thank you so much! 🙂 the piano music i use mostly are from ernesto cortazar, or jason piano, both can be found on youtube searches.

  9. Amanda,

    Please help! I cannot get to the printable for the pop-up flower card/ I have been trying for about 30 minutes.

    Thank you
    Gail Hunt

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