tissue paper flowers

Gather 'round, my crafty children, & listen as I tell you a story:

Once upon a time in a land far, far away… where the rains last for days & the bugs are the size of your big toe (a.k.a. Florida), a certain craft blogger set out on a quest: to make her very own flowers out of crepe paper. She had been making such crepe paper flowers ever since she was a little girl. Molding the paper in her hands to mimic roses, carnations, & daisies, twisting crepe leaves around pipe cleaner stems. She thought her quest would be a simple one - a quick stop at the craft store & she would be on her way. 

BUT NO. NO ONE SELLS CREPE PAPER ANYMORE.

What is up with that? Seriously, I used to use the crap out of that stuff when I was little. I searched high and freaking low for some crepe paper up in this town, & all I could find were crepe paper streamers. It seems like it's only available online anymore, & sometimes I'm just too impatient to order things online. I WANT FLOWERS NOW, DARNIT. 

The moral of this story is to improvise. Thus, the tissue paper flower was born.

These were ridiculously easy to make. There are lots of very helpful tutorials out there on how to make tissue paper flowers, but I wanted to show you how I did it (with .gifs!), plus a bonus color stain step. 

You'll only need four things:

• Tissue paper (preferably non-glossy)
• Floral stems (alternatively, you could use wire & floral tape as I did for my DIY fabric flowers)
• Pliers
• Scissors

Cut your tissue paper into small rectangles. I found that one large piece of tissue paper equaled two flowers. Fold your paper accordion style. 

Take the floral stem and wrap it around the middle of your paper accordion. Pinch the wire flat with pliers.

Next, cut rounded edges on the ends of the accordion. You could also make triangle shaped edges, depending on what style of flower you're going for.

Carefully pull each layer of paper up, starting in the middle. 

Ta-da! Easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

To stain your flowers, mix together liquid food coloring & water. The more food coloring you use, the stronger your color will be. Using a brush, lightly dab the mixture onto your flower. Don't saturate the paper entirely, just a light coat. If you want to go darker, wait until your flower is dry to apply more color. My final flowers were used with about a cup of water with four drops of yellow food coloring mixed in - I used red dye for the tutorial hoping it would be easier to see. Next time I'm going to experiment & mix colors!

Happy flower making!

xoxo, 

-m.e.

Related // See the flowers on their new home, or make some fabric flowers.