Tissue Paper Pom Poms

My twins 4th birthday party is this weekend. We are having their party at our house which seemed like a good idea. Now I am realizing how much work it's going to be. What was I thinking? The kids love rainbows so we are going with a rainbow theme. I decided to make some of my own rainbow decor to try and save some money. Martha Stewart has a great tutorial for making pom pom balls using tissue paper. I am not going to try and outdo Martha, but she did provide some great inspiration. You will need:

• Tissue paper in various colors
• Scissors
• Floral wire or twist ties
• Fishing line or clear or white thread for hanging

The dollar store sells a variety of colors of tissue paper and you can probably find something that will match your theme. I really like the rainbow stripes and dots tissue paper they sell.

The size tissue paper you use will determine the size of the pom poms you get. The tissue paper I got was sized 20 by 20 and is great if you want to make really BIG pom poms. 

Stack four sheets of tissue paper and start folding in an accordion pattern like you would to make a paper fan. I tried to make each fold 1 1/2 inches wide. 

When you are done, you should have something that looks like this.

Martha Stewart used floral wire for this next step, but I am more a use what you have kind of girl. I don't think it would shock anyone who knows me that I don't have floral wire lying around. But I do have lots and lots of twist ties that I save when we get various items. So I found a twist tie that fit around the folded tissue paper and secured it in the middle.

Next, I rounded the edges using a scissor. Make sure you have a sharp, strong scissor as you will be cutting through a lot of paper at once. You can get different looks for your pom poms depending on how you cut the edges. The red pom pom you will see below has pointed edges which I made by cutting the ends to look like an a "V."

Then you want to fan it open and start pulling the tissue paper up layer by layer. Make sure you pull it in different directions - some going up and some going down so you get a nice full pom pom.

Here it is when it's all fluffed out. I cut off six inches from the 20 x 20 tissue paper to get this sized pom pom. I like the idea of having various sizes hanging as I feel it adds interest.

To hang the pom poms you can use some fishing line or clear quilting thread. I used some white thread because I had neither of those around and it looks fine too.

Here are some of the different colors I made. I will hang them all up outdoors the day of the party and will be sure to post some photos of the decor next week.