How to make tissue paper poms

This is an extremely inexpensive project that makes a pretty decent decoration. You’ll need lots of tissue paper in the color(s) of your choosing, floral wire, string, and perhaps nails, tacks, staples or some other way of hanging them. I used colorful tissue paper because I like color. You’ll need at least 8 sheets for each pom.

This pack only had 4 sheets of each color, so I mixed and matched – light and dark green, two shades of blue, etc. I think it worked nicely. I used this tutorial, which is a more detailed description of Martha’s tutorial. If you want a real tutorial, use the first one. Martha’s isn’t very detailed, and mine is basically worthless because I didn’t take actually take many pictures.

Lay 8 sheets in a stack, then fold them accordion-style. Each fold should be about an inch, but don’t worry about perfection. Wrap about 6-8 inches of floral wire around the middle of the folded stack, and leave a little wire sticking out in a hoop shape for hanging later. Then cut about an inch and a half off both ends and shape into a rounded edge. The first pom I made, I only rounded, didn’t cut off the inch and a half, and it ended up huge and ridiculous. I highly recommend trimming down.

Then you fan it out and start pulling each layer outward. Make it ‘floofy,’ as the first tutorial says. It’s hard to describe this step, just start pulling. Very gently! I had a few rips when I got careless.

(This is the first one I did. See how huge and obnoxious it is?)

Floof both sides and make it as full and shapely as possible. They tend to flatten out a little when you set them down, so you can do more shaping when they’re hung. I don’t recommend doing these too far in advance though – they’ll flatten and wilt. I did mine the night before and hung them right away, and they survived suspended in the air just great.

Once all your poms are made, locate that wire hoop you made on each and tie a string to it. The other end of the string will need to be secured in place using those nails, tacks or staples I mentioned. We used nails because they were hanging from a garage ceiling and nails holes were acceptable. Also because we realized too late that we only had one staple for the staple gun. Oops.

We only made seven poms, but we hung them sort of scattered over where the food was going to go, and it looked great. Especially when we turned the christmas lights on.

All in all, tissue paper poms = success!