It was my lovely neighbor Vivian’s 8th birthday today. I’ve known her since her chubby toddler cheeks moved in six years ago so I wanted to make her something special. I didn’t have all the time in the world, her party was in a few hours, so I landed on giant paper flowers. Simple, I had all the stuff, and still a bit of a new challenge for my Make Stuff Challenge. Not nearly as time consuming or precise as the paper flowers I made for Teacher Appreciation Day, these were fun and very free form. So free form that to be honest they were one big experiment.
I based the flower design on those tissue paper pom-poms. The paper dying job was a guessing game but turned out pretty well for it being the first time.
Here’s what I did…
SUPPLIES:
- Plain white sheets of tissue paper
- Food coloring and/or watercolor paints
- Paintbrush
- A bowl
- Floral Stem Wire (thick, like 18 gauge)
- Scissors
First I stacked 8 sheets of the tissue paper and accordion folded it. Then I cut a half circle on each end.
Accordion Fold 
Petal Cut
I filled a small bowl with water and some drops of pink food coloring. I then dripped various colors of food coloring straight onto the white tissue paper on both ends and then quickly dunked the entire paper into the bowl. I then flattened it out and painted some green watercolor on randomly and left it to dry on the grass.
Food Coloring Drip As the paper dried a bit, I carefully pulled the sheets apart to help speed up the drying.
Wet version Once dry, I then re-folded the sheets in an accordion fold and tied a floral wire stem around the middle and twisted it tight. Then I carefully pulled up each sheet on both sides until it was puffy.
Fold 
Twist
Carefully Pull Up Each Sheet
Close Up
Both Flowers Things I Learned:
– Tissue paper is surprisingly tough, it withstood all of this dying and pulling pretty well.
– The color dried much lighter than I thought it would.
– Don’t worry if your hands are all dyed up, it comes off after a couple of hand washes.
– The experiments could go on infinitely. I think it would be cool to paint glue on each tip and dip in a little glitter. Or watercolor paint a bunch of colors all over the paper rather than drip color on. Basically I learned I will be playing around with this concept more.Vivian loved her flower as did Elise who got the other one of the two. I twisted it around the post of her bed… floral stem wire is good that way.
Elise with Flowers
fumbleweeds 
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