Tissue Paper Flowers

The holiday of Passover is in a few days and we are going to be hosting my family for a "seder." There are going to be 18 people and half of those are kids so I wanted to make some table decor that would be beautiful, yet cheap and kid-friendly. By the way, these ideas would work perfectly for Easter or any other occasion.

I started out by going to Dollar Tree to see what I could come up with. As soon as I saw the multi-pack of spring colored tissue paper, I knew that would be my starting point. I found a pack of pipe cleaners in coordinating colors, two narrow vases, and knew that I had the glass beads at home that would work perfectly as vase filler (I ended up only using the blue ones.)

After putting each color paper in its own pile, I started out by cutting them down to size. They started out as 20"x20" and I cut them down to 10"x10" (in half and then in half again). That gave me 20 squares of each color.

Then I took a set of 10 squares and folded them like a accordian (or as my 6 year old said "like a fan.") I rounded the edges on each side to soften them up and then cut two little notches in the center where I would wrap the pipe cleaner around it.

Here's a close-up of the pipe cleaner wrapped around the middle.

Then the fun part begins - carefully pulling up each layer, separating and fluffing it up as you go along.

I did all these steps two more times with yellow and green tissue paper. I then wrapped all the stems around each other to strengthen them and help the flowers stand up better.

Sorry I didn't take a picture of the next part, but I needed two hands! Just hold the flower stems as high up as possible while it's sitting in the vase and add the glass beads all around them to disguise the stem and help them stand up straight. That's it - you're done! I'd show you my second one, but I dropped the second vase and glass shattered every where so I have to go back to the dollar store and get another one :-(

I still had two colors of tissue paper left so I decided to make some napkin rings. I cut all the squares down again into 5"x5" squares since these flowers had to be much smaller.

I followed all the same steps listed above, but this time I cut the tips to a point, instead of rounding them. I also cut the pipe cleaners in half so they wouldn't be so long and curled them into a circle so the napkins could slide right through.

And here they all are. I know these pictures are darker than the rest, but by the time I finished it was dark out.

Here's a picture of one of the napkin rings with a napkin in it. Yes, in a effort to keep it real, I'm showing it with a paper napkin, but you get the idea!

So there you have it  - two centerpieces and 18 napkin rings. Total spent: $4 ($5 if you count the replacement vase). That's what I call a great deal!

Are you doing anything special for the upcoming holiday?

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