Instructions

1. To begin with, you will need a large number of strips of tissue paper which are identically sized. There are a number of approaches you can take to doing this.
2. To make the process as rapid as possible, I started out by folding a large piece of tissue paper repeatedly. I then cut along the sides so that I had a bunch of strips. I then folded that over and over before cutting along the sides again to get a bunch of smaller strips.
3. Separate your many strips of tissue paper into piles. Each should have the same number of tissue paper strips in it.
4. Place all but one of the piles aside for now. Begin folding it back and forth and back and forth as if you are making a fan.
5. Once you have that accordion/fan shape, pinch it together in the middle so that it fans out to either side kind of like a bow tie.
6. Tie a piece of gardening wire around the center.
7. Start pulling the two sections that fan out from the middle open so that they form a flattened flower shape. Then, carefully begin separating the layers and standing them up until you have sculpted them into a ball shape.
8. You may need to do some trimming to even up the edges as you go.
9. At this point, if all you wanted was a small flower without a full, voluminous ball shape, you could call the project completed. But if you want to create a full-sized tissue paper ball flower, you will need to repeat all the steps above with the remaining three piles of tissue paper strips. This will give you four identical smaller flowers.
10. All that is left to do is to bring together the four smaller flowers, bunching up the tissue paper so that it forms a ball shape. As you are doing that, bring the gardening wire “stems” together, and twist them around each other to form a single, stronger stem.
11. Once you have finished crafting a single tissue paper ball flower, consider making one or two more, and arranging them together with some faux leaves inside a vase or basket. They also can be used to decorate wreaths, gifts, and more.