TUTORIAL: Tissue Puff Balls!

With Earth Day coming up in a couple of days, I thought I'd show you a great way to repurpose old tissue paper. Let's make some puff balls!

So dang cute. And what's better: they are crazy easy to make. An awesome friend of mine taught me how to make these a couple of weeks ago and I think they rock!

What you need:

16 sheets of tissue paper, decent scissors and some bendable wire.

Of course, you can use new tissue paper. Just go out and buy some. But if you're like me and you feel bad throwing tissue paper away you probably have a pile of it shoved in a cupboard somewhere. Just iron it out and voila! New tissue paper!

Step 1:

Lay out your tissue paper so it all lines up, more or less. Then accordion-fold the paper lengthwise (hamburger, not hot dog). Make approximately 1 inch folds until the entire stack is folded up.

Step 2:

Fold the accordion stack in half and crease it.

Step 3:
Tie some wire around the center crease of your tissue paper and make a little hook or loop. This will be used to hang the puff. (Although, you'll want the hook/loop to be along the folded edge of the tissue paper, not on the top/bottom. I wasn't paying much attention when I did it and forgot to take another picture after I fixed it.)

Step 4:
Cut the ends of the tissue paper in a V-shape. You can also do a rounded end (or any number of shapes, I'm sure), but for this tutorial I went with the easy V.

Step 5:
Lay the stack on it's side and fan it out. Then start lifting the tissue paper layer by layer to form the upper half of the puff.

Step 6:
Flip the half-puff over and repeat this process on the other side until you have formed a ball!

Step 7:

Hang the puff. Easy, cute decoration for parties or everyday kid-room fun!

Hope you find a reason to make these, because they really are cool. Your friends will be so impressed, and you can say Sassy taught you. And I can say Kelly taught me. And Kelly can say she learned it somewhere else and we can have a big puff ball party!

Puffin Away,