Weddingbee Blog

Little balls of loveliness, created from two things I love: tea and food coloring (it reminds me of Easter!). You just take some brewed tea, add a few drops of food coloring, and take standard white tissue paper pre-cut into 10″ X 5″ stacks. After following Martha’s instructions, I got this lovely thing:

custom dyed tissue pomander

Pretty, no?

I even saved time by skipping the hot glue.

I only glued about 10 of the 30 flowers required for this ball. I spaced those flowers out to act as anchors to the unglued flowers. The reason I did this was because hot glue is not my forte, to say the least. I’m always left with burned fingers and swathed in a cobweb of the shiny stuff that extends from my project to the table to my appendages. Plus, the hot glue melted the styrofoam ball quite a bit. And the wire holds the flowers in plenty good enough.

Here are the instructions to dye the paper:

I have found two stacks of Michaels white tissue paper ($1.79) makes a little more than two balls. However, I used between 30 and 35 flowers per ball, which is quite a lot but gives it a nice, dense flower-full look.

• Measure tissue paper into 10″ X 5″ rectangles and cut out stacks.
• Boil a small pot of water, add two English (black) tea bags and let steep two minutes. Add about four drops of red food dye. I tested a single sheet of tissue in this brew, blow dried to check color, and was satisfied. It appeared almost white, but later on when four layers of paper are together in the flower it appeared the prettiest blush color.
• Take about one-inch tall stacks of the pre-cut tissue paper and place on cookie sheets.
• Pour enough dye into cookie sheets to cover tissue paper.
• Let sit for 10 minutes.
• Carefully pour excess water out.
• CAREFULLY pick up sopping wet stacks of dyed tissue and place on wire cooling racks or drape over backs of metal (or any material that won’t be damaged by water) chairs.
  The next day, take outside to dry in the sun.

OK, the tutorial to make the flowers can be found via the Martha’s link above, but here they are modified as per Vintage Glam’s instructions:

1. Cut your paper into 10″ X 5″ pieces.
2. Cut your wire (I used 22 gauge) into about 4″ long pieces.
3. Stack four sheets of tissue.
4. Make stacks into 3/8″-wide accordion folds.
5. Bend wire in half, slip over center of folded tissue and twist to secure. Trim the ends of the tissue.
6. Separate layers, pulling away up to center one at a time.
7. Secure ribbon into 5″ styrofoam ball via wire FIRST.
8. Start poking wire flower ends all the way into styrofoam ball, spacing about an inch to an inch and a half apart.
9. Be careful not to smoosh flowers when you get toward the end, although they can be easily fluffed up again.

BONUS TIP:

10. Secure ribbon with wire first. I used a skewer poked into the ball and then secured it to the table with a small vice in order to keep the ball secure while I plunged wire flowers into it. This becomes useful when most of the flowers are in, and if you’re holding the ball you end up smooshing flowers. This is not so if it’s perched atop a little jerry-rigged stand.

Also, check out Mrs. Ramen’s similar post on pomanders for lots of “fluffity” ball eye candy!