With Miri's first birthday fast approaching like any good craftaholic i had been pinning for months planning the ultimate rainbow/kaleidoscope party that this magical little cherub deserves: The Squiggstravaganza!
It's her first and i'm gonna set that bar high!
The first order of crafty business is decor so i chose a couple of simple projects utilizing the cheapest and most versatile of all craft supplies: Tissue Paper.
Oh the tissue paper, i hoard that stuff and yet my stash dwindled as i measured and cut and hot glued and repeated.The project?
Tissue Paper Birthday Number
Oh it's cute and i love the kind of furry texture i created by cutting all those little flowers with pinking shears. But it took A LOT of tissue paper. However much you think you'll need add 2-3 packs and you'll be close. This took the equivalent of about three 24 sheet packs, and it is pretty much the easiest number! If you are doing a more involved number like four or eight or, lord help you, ten, go ahead and buy 5 or 8 packs and return what you don't use, if any.
Now had i retrieved my holiday supply tote from the top shelf in the back closet earlier i would have diversified my colors and perhaps saved myself a return trip to the party aisle at wal-mart. But Alas i did not.
Along with a deluge of tissue paper you will also need quite a bit of time, and a sympathetic spouse/friend would be helpful. The size and effect of your tissue 'flowers' all depends on how you cut them. I cut 4-5" squares with zigzag pinking shears.
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| Cut |
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| Stack |
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| Crumple |
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| "Helping" |
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| I started by painting my foam board number in case any backing peeked through, that ended up not being an issue. |
Make enough flowers/poofs to get started then trick some poor soul into making more for you while you glue. The good thing about this technique is that it is so forgiving, crumple and glue and it's oh so fancy lookin'.
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| I started by gluing around the edges, then filling in. |
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| Day 3 |
And voila! A few short nap times later you have a great big fancy pants birthday number that only costs a little bit of your sanity.
Fortunately, my other tissue based project was much quicker to put together and actually a refreshing break from all those little poofs.
Tissue Tassel Garland
70! 70 tissue paper tassels Ah Ah Ah!
First cut your rectangles, i did 4" x 10" approximately, you can guesstimate here i just knew i wanted 10 rectangles per 20 x 20"sheet of tissue.
After your rectangles are cut, fold them in half vertically so you have some squarish things.
We experimented looking for the quickest way to turn out 70 of these bad boys to make a 20ish foot garland, (if you only need 5 feet 25-30 tassels ought to be plenty). Cutting by hand is the obvious method but it's time consuming, so i stacked and cut several at a time which was a lot quicker but it was difficult to get nice even strands and then it hit me: paper shredder.
We have a little home office jobby for shredding...well nevermind.
To get the auto-feed function on the shredder to recognize the delicate tissue my hubby had the stroke of genius to fold a piece of notepad paper over the raw edges.
Then we shredded raw edges down and stopped with about an inch left intact at the top. < that bit is important
Like so
In order to get our shredder to cooperate one of us fed the paper stacks in while the other person manned the switch: On....wait until you are in inch from the top then off and reverse to get the paper back out. Was it troublesome? yes. Was it fun and ridiculous? also yes.
Once unfolded/ untangled they should look like this (approximately):
Next each little frilly thing needs to be rolled up with the fringe at either end.
Folded over
and taped leaving a little loop to string them together
With two people working on these we knocked them all out in one evening, I strung them on a hemp cord and hot glued them in place about 3" inches apart. My favorite thing about this project is it's versatility. These can be made in any color for CHEAP, and you can play with the scale making them huge for a big statement (maybe the end of chair rows at a funky wedding) or tiny for topping a cake. String them as close or far apart as you like!
I definitely needed something like this after the tissue paper monstrosity at the beginning of this post.
Anyway, Miri's party is tomorrow and the whole clan is coming into town (including my bestie The Real Housewife of Greenville! :D ), so i have to get baking!
Stay tuned for our next installment: The Birthday Squiggstravaganza Part II: Almost Rainbow Cake!
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