Flowers: so very many of them

This is Michael's "I'm humoring her" face. :)

This is Michael’s “I’m humoring her” face. 🙂

 

I know everyone out there was on the edge of their seats waiting for me to tell you all about my exquisite (don’t you mock me) multitude of tissue paper flowers.  And, since I would never be so cruel as to allow you to fall off a chair, I’ve decided to enlighten you on my practiced and perfected technique.

Because my first flowers seriously looked like crap.

Which is weird, right?  I can’t be the only one who remembers making these things in elementary school.

What You’ll Need: 

Supplies!

Supplies!  Remember these from a few days ago?

  • Huge pack of tissue paper.  (I went with the ginormous megapack of rainbow happiness, but if you prefer to go all purple or red or alternating purple or red or some other combination, you go right ahead.  The world is your oyster.)
  • Big pack of pipe cleaners. (Once again, I went with rainbow happiness…but green might make more sense for “flower stems” if you’re so inclined to make sense of your paper flowers).
  • Scissors

If you’re wondering why there are foam cones and straight pins and that picture check out my last tutorial on fancy tissue paper flower trees.

How to put it all together:

  1. Take your tissue paper out of the plastic packaging.  My wrapper says that it’s 20 x 26 inchs, and just looking at it I could tell it was too big for my project.  Feel free to go larger or small, though, depending on where you’re planning on putting them.  I’d be curious to see how it turns out when it’s made with the full sheet.
    When I unfolded my paper I noticed that it the folds made 4 rectangles.  Using these as guidelines I cut it into fourths.

    When I unfolded my paper I noticed that it the folds made 4 rectangles. Using these as guidelines I cut it into fourths.

    Fourths worked really well for me, I’m guessing halves would also work with the petals going longways.

    Here is one of my cut out fourths.  Apparently I had to pick the really unattractive side to photograph.

    Here is one of my cut out fourths. Apparently I had to pick the really unattractive side to photograph.

     

  2. Take your fourth and fold it accordion style.

    Voila!

    Voila!

  3. Now take that accordion and fold it in half to figure out where the middle is.  Cut a triangular notch on each side of that fold.
    Okay...so they're not perfect triangles, but trust me they'll do.

    Okay…so they’re not perfect triangles, but trust me they’ll do.

     

  4. Take out your trusty pipe cleaner and wrap it around the accordion.  It should go through your two little notches.     DSCF4888

     The notches will help when we go to spread out the petals.

    Your creation should now look like this from slightly farther away.

    Your creation should now look like this from slightly farther away.

     

  5. Whip out your scissors again (gently…gently).  Now we’re going to start slicing out the petals.  Cut along the folds of the accordion first.  DSCF4819After you’ve cut out the slits you can shape the petals by folding it back up into an accordion and rounding the ends of a bunch of them at a time, or by cutting them fanned out one by one.  I’d suggest folding it back up and doing a few folds at a time.  There are so many layers at this point that it will probably be pretty difficult to cut through the whole thing.  The petals should look like this when you’re done:                                           DSCF4823

  6. Now that you’ve got the petals cut out (and trust me, they make the flowers look more like they were made by an adult and not a small child) you can start pulling apart the layers.  I suggest alternating between pulling up one side and then the other instead of separating one whole side of the flower at a time.  It makes spreading everything apart a whole lot easier.

    Since my flowers were multicolor I just kept reminding myself to pull apart all of one color before moving down to the next.  First it was pink, then white, then yellow etc.

    Since my flowers were multicolor I just kept reminding myself to pull apart all of one color before moving down to the next. First it was pink, then white, then yellow etc.

Also, just as a friendly tip, don’t manhandle the tissue paper.  Always keep in mind that tissue paper is not tough and durable.  It’s lightweight and fragile.  So when you get frustrated and yank the petals apart like the Hulk it tends to rip.  And then you’ll be sad, or maybe mad at yourself.  And then you’ll  turn green.  And then you’ll clearly be totally irrevocably angry and you’ll smash.  I don’t know what you’ll smash…but please don’t channel the Hulk.  Think delicate.  Roses.  Glass figurines.  300 year old teacups.  Fluffy bunnies.  Delicate.

And, after you’ve so delicately pulled all those petals apart, you’ll have a lovely tissue paper flower.                                               DSCF4828

 I think they kind of look like truffula trees…or they would if they were all one color.  If you make a whole bunch of them you can strew them about the house pretending to be the magical fairy of tissue paper flowers.  They should tie to things pretty easily because of those handy dandy pipe cleaners.  My favorites were the light fixtures/chandeliers.  We wrapped the flowers around the bases making them look pretty festive.

Weird angle, I know...couldn't be helped.

Weird angle, I know…couldn’t be helped.

You can even stick them in vases, if you want.  One tutorial I read recommended wrapping the stem around a chopstick or pencil so that the flowers actually stay standing up.  They’re a little heavy so they’ll fall out if you don’t put some weight on the stem.

I’ll leave you guys with my favorite photo…I don’t actually remember how he held them up like that.  Mouth maybe?

Ridiculous.

Ridiculous.

P.S.  What do you think of my 20 minute tissue paper flag banner thing (in imitation of the Mexican papel picado ones…which are far prettier than mine, so Google if you’ve got no clue as to what I’m talking about.  There are some pretty amazing ones out there).  We didn’t have a plastic banner for the front room so I improvised.  It wasn’t like I was in any danger of running out of tissue paper.

Well, hope everyone has a great week.  I’m off to be responsible and work on my paper.  And, before you go, you may notice that I’ve added a few things to the sidebar (I’m getting sooooo technical, I know).  I’ve recently joined the blogaholic network, so I’m still playing around with that because I really want to connect Scribblers Experiment with other blogs, learn how to do more fun things with my blog, meet new people–I like having goals.

Also—the most important part—I’ve joined Bloglovin, and put Scribblers Experiment on there, so if you have an account, I’d be thrilled, honored, touched, moved, etc. if you decided to follow me on there, or to follow me by clicking the subscribe thing under the comment field. (I promise I’ll figure out how to put a normal old subscribe bar on the sidebar soon).  But if you’ve never seen Bloglovin, it’s a really cool site that allows you to track your favorite blogs (at least the ones that are one it…which is a lot) in an organized fashion.  It keeps you up to date with new stuff without cluttering up your inbox from a million new blog posts coming in, so definitely check me out on that.

Next post, I think we’ll travel back in time to December when I got travel cross country to visit Liz out in San Francisco.  She’s probably the only one so far to identify my banner.  Those weird stones are from the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park.

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