DIY: Tissue Paper Pom Poms

Okay so, my son's birthday party is coming up soon and it's going to be a backyard bbq shpeal, and Chels has offered to help me do the decorations and such. Not that a 3 year old cares for those things, but those who know me know I'm a little wacky and need to have those things done. So here's a tutorial of how to make tissue paper pom poms yourself :) *They're also known as tissue paper flowers or balls

WHAT YOU'LL NEED:

Tissue paper (no picture shown) - You can use whatever colour your heart desires.
Craft wire - They come in different diameters, but 1mm-1.5mm should do the trick)


Thread - I personally use crochet yarn because it's thin, but also durable when you need to make chains. I have used fishing line and clear elastic thread in the past because aesthetically it does turn out better, but sometimes the elastic can snap or the knots don't hold. Whatever the case, the choice is yours.




INSTRUCTIONS:

So essentially you need to know a few things before starting: a) The diameter of your tissue paper pom poms will be the length of your tissue paper. It'll be the length along which you make your "accordion folds", you'll see in a bit. b) If you use too many sheets of tissue paper, your pom pom will be too full and it will look like $#*! c) If you don't use enough sheets of tissue paper, your pom pom will be too sparse and it'll look like...$#*!


STEP 1: Cut the tissue paper sheets so that the length is equivalent to the diameter you want the pom pom to be. The ones I made for this tutorial are roughly 5 inches and I made the pom poms using one full sheet of tissue paper that I cut up to make 6 sheets altogether.


STEP 2: Accordion fold it the way you would a paper fan.





STEP 3: Cut the edges to mimic a petal shape; this is pretty much essential when you unfold the sheets, otherwise you'll have trouble doing it without ripping the tissue paper.




STEP 4: Cut roughly 4-5 inches of the craft wire.


STEP 5: Secure you're pom pom with the wire by tying it in the middle of your accordion-folded tissue paper. You'll find that "tying it" isn't the term I should be using because it's wire but I think it's understood what I meant. Anyway, Make sure you have at least an inch of wire coming out both sides for the string loops.


STEP 6: Twist the excess ends of the craft wire so that they form loops




STEP 7: Using the string you picked to hang/attach the pom poms with, pass it through one of the loops. You can cut the string as long as it needs to be for you to hang it at whatever length you desire.




STEP 8: When the tissue paper is secured by the wire and your string is attached, you can start creating the pom pom effect. All you have to do is separate the tissue paper sheets!




After this point, all you really have to do is fluff up the sheets to shape it out so it looks even. Then all you do is hang it!
Et voila! DIY Tissue Paper Pom Poms

DIY: Mug Decorating on Porcelain or Ceramic

As avid tea and coffee enthusiasts, chelC-3P0 thought it would be such a great idea to decorate mugs and put it on our blog; so this actually turned out to be just that: such a great idea! Although glitter-less, we're definitely putting this project to good use. And it also turned out well because my son was able to do this with us and now we have a birthday present for daddy (even though I can't distinguish whether he drew a dolphin or a blob)
Hope you enjoy the tutorial

What You'll Need:
Permanent markers (We used BIC, you can use Sharpies or whatever other brand permanent markers you have as long as they are permanent)
Porcelain or Ceramic mugs

INSTRUCTIONS
Wash your mug(s) with soap and water.
Draw on your mug(s) with the permanent markers.

Pre-Heat the oven to 350 degrees (Fahrenheit).
When the oven is ready and your design is complete, place your mugs on a tray (we used a cupcake/muffin baking tray because our mugs fit perfectly in them) and put them in the oven.

Bake your mug(s) for 30 minutes.

Remove the mug(s) from heat.
Leave the mugs to cool while the ink sets.
Et voila! DIY porcelain and ceramic permanent marker mug designs!

DIY Dip Dye!

Mmm... So this past Wednesday, chelC-3P0 and myself decided to do some dip dye projects, this ended up being the turn out:

Of course, we wish we could give you a step-by-step tutorial, but at the moment we're lacking in adequate photographs to demonstrate what we did. I think this should suffice though

Essentially, we filled a bucket with steaming water, mixed the powder dye until fully dissolved; in this particular instance, we only had fuchsia dye - TULIP brand..

Then we dipped the top OR bottom of the dresses into the dye, depending on which ended we wanted to be fully saturated with colour.

We let the ends soak up the colour to get the faded effect of going from heavy saturation at the ends into a gradual desaturation until the opposite ends of our dresses were white.

However, after putting it into the wash BEFORE letting the entire article of clothing dry, the white portions of our dresses turned a very light pink.

Personally, we both think it looks better that way, but if you do want to maintain the white ends, then we suggest you let the dye dry out--depending on how heavily soaked the fabric is, this may take up to 8 hours.

Anyway, once we were ready, we popped the clothes into the washer; just follow your standard washer/drying procedure with appropriate detergents and fabric softeners; as long as you let the dye sit for long enough, you wont have a problem with the colour washing away.
Pop it in the dryer, et voila! DIY Dip Dye!