Getting crafty: Tissue Paper Flowers

Spring has sprung and seeing colorful flowers in bloom make me so happy!  I happened to have plenty of tissue paper and pipe cleaners on hand, so why not make our very own bright, colorful flowers?

It’s really quite easy and there are steps that my daughter’s nimble little fingers can do as well.  These flowers can be used as decorations for anything from a birthday party to a backyard BBQ.  The pipe cleaners make it easy to attach them almost anywhere.  I wanted to make my plain white flowers a little more cheerful for our Spring celebration so we sprayed them with a light mist of liquid watercolors. (I ordered mine here. Easy to wash off and clean up!!)  If you don’t have liquid watercolor I’m sure a bit of water with a few drops of food coloring would work as well.  Just be sure to use a spray bottle with a fine mist so that you don’t wet the delicate paper too much!   If you do have colorful tissue paper, then have fun with layering different colors colors together.  Each flower will be beautifully unique!

Step 1: Gather your supplies – 6 sheets of tissue paper per flower (cut your rectangular sheets into squares), pipe cleaners (I used green so that we could have green stems), safety scissors

Step 2: Stack the 6 sheets of tissue paper neatly and fold one side over about 1″.  Turn the stack over and fold back the same width.  Continue until it’s all folded up like a fan

Step 3: Wrap the end of the pipe cleaner a few times around the middle of your folded tissue paper.  You are securing the center of your flower.  

Step 4: This step is optional but I always like to cut the ends of the paper.  Usually, I just do a rounded edge, but you can get creative and do a pointy edge or try shredding the edge with 4 or 5 cuts or do an inverted curve.  

Step 5: Slowly separate one sheet of paper on one side and pull up so that it’s standing.  Repeat on the other side.  Now you can see how your flower is going to come together! Continue pulling up sheet by sheet on each side until you’re finished.  

Congrats! Your paper flower is complete!  

Well, we couldn’t stop at just one!  And here are some that we sprayed with orange and purple watercolors! The girls especially loved this step!