Tissue Paper Flowers

Today I’m going to tell you about a craft project I did lately. 

A long time ago I was given a tall silk plant for my wedding.  It was really nice, until a few years ago, when my kids decided that the leaves made good blankets for tiny Hello Kitties.  Then they showed me their work.  I was like, ‘Great … Let’s turn the tree that way so the bald spot doesn’t show.’  Some of them may have learned the lesson, but others didn’t and last winter, it finally lost too many leaves – even to put in a corner.   Its level of mutilation had reached the level where I believed I had to throw it away.  But, remember my post about the eco-center?  Yeah, I didn’t get around to it. 

Then I got this genius idea to strip all the leaves and branches and to see if I could do anything else with it.  I had this idea in my head that I should take some of the branches I trimmed back off my trees that grow outside and graft them into the existing poles.  Then I could hang origami cranes off it or something light like that.  But I didn’t get that far. 

I was getting ready for a party and making those enormous tissue paper flowers.   One and one just clicked.  Instead of finding some inconvenient place to hang them I should just attach them onto the tops of my dead tree.  This was the end result.

There’s irony in this.  My children couldn’t leave the sturdy silk leaves alone; however, the fragile tissue paper has not been touched.  It’s been weeks since I put it together.  I gave it a life expectancy of about twenty minutes (after the party was over).  It’s still fine.  I put it in my dining room.  It really brightens the place up – like a Dr. Seuss book.  

P.S. Party decoration $2.00.  How sweet is that?