A Recipe for Smiles

Okay so perhaps this is a bit of a stretch as it isn’t really a recipe, but more of a craft project.. but hey.. who’s keeping score!

A girl I work with at the library was recently diagnosed with stage 4 leukemia and is in the hospital indefinitely in the ICU. The library organized a care basket to be brought to her, but because of her illness, no live flowers were allowed in her room. I think that flowers are so fun and cheerful, I thought I would make her these lovely tissue paper flowers instead!

The flowers are really easy to make and can be made in a variety of sizes/shapes/colors all depending on what you want. I decided to make a bouquet, and use “funky” colors and patterns because I thought that is what my friend would like best.

Materials:
Tissue paper

Pipe cleaners (which are now called fuzzy sticks.. how weird is that)

Instructions:
You can pretty much use as little or as many sheets of tissue paper as you want for this, depending on how big or full you want your flowers to look. I probably used 5-8 pieces per flower…

1. Cut tissue paper into rectangles of desired size).

2. Stack the pieces of tissue paper. Use the same color or different colors.

3. Accordion pleat the tissue paper working from the long side.
 

4. Wind one end of the “fuzzy stick” around the middle of the accordion pleated tissue paper.

5. Trim the ends of each side to give the pedals a unique look. Trimming the ends into a point (like a triangle), or a bump (like a half circle) will look very pretty.

6. Gently separate each layer pulling upwards toward the middle of the flower.

 

7. You can fluff the flower as needed. I made a bunch and put them in a vase with blue glass beads - but they could be used for a lot of different things! I've since used them as the decoration on a present too!

I've never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful.

Author Unknown