Tissue Paper Cherry Blossoms

I have always loved the look of cherry blossoms. They are so elegant and simple; they fit perfectly with my sense of style. Unfortunately there are no cherry trees around here, so I can’t just go picking branches up off the street. 🙁

So when I saw some beautiful cherry blossoms made out of tissue paper on Pinterest I knew I had to make some! The pin pointed back to a post by Kara at Creations By Kara who decorated for spring by making some of these flowers for her mantel. I don’t have a mantel (or a fireplace, or wall space, or an entryway, or anywhere to put decorations really…) but I decided I needed to make some anyway!

To recreate these flowers for yourself you need:

• tissue paper
• branches
• scissors
• a hot glue gun (or other glue)
• a fun vase (optional)
• a mantel (also optional)

The first step is to choose the tissue paper colors you’d like to use for your flowers. I used two different shades of pink, but the fun thing about these flowers is that you could make them out of any color and they’d still be awesome!

Fold up a piece of tissue paper so that you have a bunch of layers, then cut out a simple flower shape. Don’t worry too much about the shape, you’re going to fold them up later. I cut some out with four petals, some with five, some big, and some little. Just vary it up however you like! For reference, the big ones are about 2″ across and the little ones are about 1″.

Once you have your flowers cut out you need to crinkle them up into the cherry blossom shape. There’s no real art to crinkling the flowers, however you want to do it will turn out fine! I sort of “wrapped” the flowers around the tip of my finger and then grabbed the center/bottom and twisted it up real tight so it formed a point. Then I just fluffed the “petals” of the flower to give them a little volume.

The top two flowers are made out of just one piece of tissue paper; to make the two on the bottom I stacked two differently colored flowers on top of each other (petals not overlapping) and then twisted them together.

Once you’ve made a bunch of flowers in whatever combinations of shapes, sizes, and colors you’d like you’re ready to glue them onto your branches! Place a small dab of hot glue onto the branch and press the pointy end of the twisted flower onto it. Hot glue is awesome for this project because it dries in about three seconds and holds really well, but any kind of glue will do in a pinch.

Just a little dab will do ya!

I tried to glue the flowers at the natural knots and buds on the branches; it gives it a more natural look for the spacing of the flowers. Make sure you glue the flowers on all sides of the branch, not just the side facing up!

When you’re done just stick them in a fancy vase and voila, instant, non-perishable, reusable decor! (Or just stick ’em in an old beer bottle, that works too :-p)

Have you decorated for spring yet? Unlike my painted terra cotta pots I think these blossoms actually count as decor, so yay me!