How To Make Paper Rosettes Decorations From Old Maps

If you look at many old roadmaps, they are often printed in Christmassy colours (white, red and green)! The backgrounds are white, forests and open spaces are green and significant roads are printed in red. That’s one of the reasons I decided to use them to make some Christmas paper rosettes.

What I love about these map paper rosettes is that they can be made in various sizes and used in multiple ways.

These map decorations look superb hung together in clumps as a wall or door decoration. Hung individually on the Christmas tree as lovely ornaments. Or you can stick a map paper rosette to the top of a gift as a beautiful decoration.

If you use maps of unique places, then that will make the decorations even more personal and unique.

DIY Map Paper Rosettes

These paper rosettes are so affordable too! You only need a hot glue gun, old buttons, and old road maps.

If you don’t have any old road maps, you can pick them up cheaply in charity and thrift stores. Buying old road maps for crafts is very economical as they are often cheaper than gift wrap or craft paper.

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What you need to make Map Paper Rosettes

• Old road maps – If you don’t have any, elderly relatives often have a stash with which they are willing to part. Or try your local charity and thrift stores.

• Buttons or craft gemstones for the centre.
• Rotary cutter and mat
• Hot glue gun

How to make paper rosettes

Step 1: First, you need to work out how large you would like your paper rosette. I made mine in a variety of sizes.

Depending on how large you want the paper rosette will depend on how long a strip of paper you will need. The length of the paper needs to be five times the width.

To make a map paper rosette 10cm in diameter (5cm radius), you will need two strips of map paper 5cm wide and 25cm long. So to make a paper rosette 8cm in diameter, you will need two strips of map paper 4cm wide by 20cm long.

To ensure a nice straight edge, use a metal ruler, mat and rotary cutter to cut the strips of map paper. Cut two strips of paper for each paper rosette.

Step 2: Next, concertina fold (like you would for a fan) each map strip. The folds should be between 7-10mm apart.

Step 3: Round each concertina map strip into a semi-circle shape. Use a hot glue gun to hold this shape in place.

Top Tip: If the map paper you have used is a bit stiff, sometimes it helps to glue a strip of paper across the semi-circle to help it keep its shape.

(Careful when using a hot glue gun, the glue burns if touched with the naked skin.)

Step 4: You should end up with two map semi-circles. Again using the hot glue gun, glue the two semi-circles together to make a paper rosette.

Finally, finish and tidy up the paper rosette by glueing a button or craft gem to the centre.

Step 5: Using different roadmaps, I made many paper rosettes in different sizes.

Displaying The Map Decorations

Now that you have made the map rosettes, there are several ways to use them. If made with Christmas map paper, add red velvet ribbon and hang them as ornaments from the Christmas tree.

One of my favourite ways to use them is to hang a cluster as wall decorations. For this use, upcycled map paper rosettes in different sizes hung from ribbons of different lengths. This is not the only way I’ve used maps as a door wreath; I’ve also made an autumn leaf map door wreath.

Or you can use the map rosettes as a gift topper. The gift recipient could then hang them on their tree; it would be like a present.

Old road maps are a favourite of mine to upcycle, especially into decorations and gifts, as they can be personalized. I’ve made map hearts and vintage map heart garlands for Christmas and Valentine’s.

You can find many ideas for paper crafts for the home that can easily be made with map paper.

Other upcycled map Christmas decorations include paper pine cones, wooden ornaments, road map paper Christmas trees and road map Christmas crackers. My favourite is the cute cotton reel map ornaments I made.

I’ve even used the road maps to upcycle old Christmas cookie tins. However, my beautiful map roses are for all year round and not just Christmas. Old road maps can be easily repurposed into cool, personalized map art.