Tissue Paper Flower Bouquet
You have to take a look at this Tissue Paper Flower Bouquet! It really is quite special!!! A few weeks ago, one of the teacher’s at my kids’ primary school asked me whether I would come in and craft with her Year 1 class (KS1). Not only did she want me to craft with them.. but she had something very specific in mind… she wanted us to make her WEDDING BOUQUET! Yes, that is right, she wanted her class of 30 five and six year olds to make her wedding bouquet for her wedding. How lovely is that? A true primary school teacher through and through. Maybe you could add some of these 3d Paper Flowers and you have your wedding decor sorted!
So it was up to me to come up with a paper flower craft that that KS1 could make for her. Not just a flower craft that 5 and 6yrs olds could make, but could make in a group of 30. As you will be aware, crafting in a classroom environment is quite different to crafting at home.
I knew that we would have a go at making Tissue Paper Flowers straight away, but none the less I asked some of my crafty friends for input… These gorgeous Handprint Lillies were also suggested!! So lovely. So we had a go at both. However, I think we made a “mistake”, we used “dull-er” sugar paper for the lillies. Though they did look great (photo below), we should have used BRIGHTER paper! So in the end the Tissue Paper Flower Bouquet “won”. All the surplous flowers including the lillies will be used as part of the wedding table decorations.
Tissue Paper Flower Bouquet – Materials
- Tissue paper (all our tissue paper is recycled)
- Pipecleaners
- Buttons
- Scissors and something round to trace
- Later: green crepe paper to bring it all together
How to make a Tissue Paper Flower
Individual examples of the children’s tissue paper flowers. Same process, all so different. Aren’t they cute?
Tissue paper flowers are really easy to make – I have made Tissue Paper Lollipop Flowers before and the process is quite similar.
Begin by selecting a button and threading the top of the pipecleaner through. You will need to then trhead the pipecleaner back down through the button and give it a little twist.
Now cut two circles of tissue paper – we used tin cans to trace.
And another two smaller circles of contrasting tissue paper – we used the bottom of a cup to trace.
Layer the tissue paper up – and push the pipecleaner carefully through the centre. Some kids found this easier than others. if need be you can make a tiny snip and push the pipecleaner through.
That is it! Your first Tissue Paper Flower is finished.
The kids made two each of these.
How to make Handprint Lillies
As mentioned Make It Your Own has a great tutorial on this – do hop over and take a look. We simplified it a little in that the centre of our lillies was just a pipecleaner a little “scrunched up at the top”.
Again the kids made two each of these.
How to make a tissue paper flower bouquet
All the tissue paper flowers on a “heap” – oh yes, they looked like quite a challenge…
I totally confess to winging this part and I am afraid I don’t have any “step by step” photos.. there was no real step by step.. save for –
I cut out some long leaves.
Then slowly gathered my flowers one by one, interpersed them with leaves and kept adding. I noticed that any flower with a HUGE button would droop too much, so I went for the mid sized flowers. Trying to alternate the colours too.
The key to this bouquet working, was to “bunch” the bouquet at around 10-15cm from BELOW the flower heads. This allowed the pipecleaners to form it’s own bouquet shape.
Once I had what looked like a nice posey of tissue paper flowers, I wrapped extra pipecleaners around the stem (10-15cm below the flower heads). You can now add some satin ribbon to your creation too!
FINSIHED!
I did the same approach for the handpring lillies bouquet!