Spring Centerpiece with Tissue Paper Blossoms

Early spring in New England is not the gorgeous, green, lush, blooming landscape that I imagine other warm climes enjoy.  It’s muddy and brown and rainy and there is even dirty snow still left on the ground.  But, that doesn’t mean you can’t adorn your table with pretty, delicate blooms.

You literally need three things to make these.  Tissue paper, scissors and either a twist tie or a pipe cleaner.

Step 1:  Fold your piece of tissue paper in half, horizontally.  Cut along the fold.

Step 2:  Set one piece of the tissue paper that you just cut in half aside.  Fold the remaining piece in half again and cut along the fold.

Step 3:  Can you guess step 3?  If you said fold the two halves of tissue paper in half and then cut at the folds, give yourself a prize!

Step 4:  You know have 4 approximately equal size pieces of tissue paper.  Stack those on top of each other.

Step 5:  Accordion fold the stack of four pieces of tissue paper.

Step 6:  Wrap your twist tie or pipe cleaner around the center of the accordion folded tissue paper.

Step 7:  Use your scissors to round the edges of the folder paper.

Step 8:  This is the hard part.  Well, it’s not really hard, it just takes patience and gentleness, which at times can be hard.  Am I right?  You are going to gently and slowly pull apart the four pieces of tissue paper.  They aren’t going to want to cooperate with you, they like being folded together.  So you have to gently coax them apart.  DON’T RIP THEM!  Just kidding, it’s not that big of a deal if you get a little rip.  Real flowers have lots of flaws.  This is sort of where art meets craft.  You’ve created the flower, now you have to primp it until you’re happy with how it looks.  There really aren’t any instructions for this.  I sort of smoothed things out and a bit and pushed some petals together and pulled others apart.  Just take your time and be gentle.