tissue paper | Roaming Rosie

This was a neat craft I enjoyed doing with my girls, and the Tissue Paper Cut Out Cards make great presents.

You can give the cards for Mother’s Day, birthday, Thank You cards, or even Thinking Of You cards.

They’re versatile that way, and you can let your kids get hands-on with the crafting.

I cut the tissue paper strips ahead of time by rolling up some colorful sheets of tissue paper into a tube-like shape and snipping off inch-wide pieces with sharp scissors.

I did do the cutting myself for these flower shapes because I wanted them to have the detailed shapes cut out of the middle of the paper, which is a little hard for small fingers to do. But they had plenty of fun with the glue and tissue paper.

I used cookie cutters from a couple of different sets, kind of like this Spring Set and this Nesting Set. We went with flowers because we made this during the springtime, but you could use any shape you like.

Fold a piece of construction or craft paper in half to make your card.

Trace the shape inside the cookie cutter, just like you would use a stencil, onto the front of the card.

Then poke your scissor in the middle of the shape and cut it out of the front of the card. Or your could open the card and place it flat on some cardboard and use an X-Acto knife to carve out the shape, or let an older kid or teen do it.

Take a white sheet of paper and cut it to fit just inside the cards.

Let your kids slather the white paper with glue or glue sticks, and then lay out the tissue paper pieces in stripes that go across and touch each other or slightly overlap.

Once the sheet of white paper covered in tissue paper strips is mostly dry, slather the inside of the card where the cut out shapes are.

Lay the white paper carefully against the glue with the tissue paper facing the cut out shapes.

Then your colorful tissue paper will show through like this:

Isn’t that darling?

The recipients were quite charmed, and the girls enjoyed making them.

You could make these cards for other holidays, too.

You could do Christmas shapes and use red and white tissue in a green card, for example. Or orange and purple tissue paper in a black card cut with Halloween shapes.

Follow me on Pinterest for more great crafting and activity ideas!

Have fun!

New Year's Eve Confetti Poppers

Confetti is always a fun way to celebrate holidays and special occasions.

Until it is time to clean up.

So, to find a way to incorporate confetti into our New Year’s celebration, I decided upon Confetti Poppers that were designed much like a pull-string pinata. And, like a pinata, we put them outside.

For the confetti, we used construction paper cut into tiny pieces. My 3-year-old was very excited about this part. I did some of the confetti, but it was mostly her job while I constructed the poppers and her younger sister giggled about the tissue paper.

New Year's Eve Confetti Poppers

I’ve seen a few varieties of things like this online, but I chose my materials based off of what I had on hand.

You’ll need:

toilet paper rolls
tissue paper
pipe cleaners
construction paper
ribbon or string
scissors

Cut the construction paper into tiny pieces for the confetti. Take the pipe cleaners and wrap one end into a kind of ball or loop. The bigger the loop the better, because the smaller loops I made (like the one pictured below) didn’t break the paper enough for all of the confetti to fall out, and those poppers had to be shaken a little.

Also, if your pipe cleaners are “kid-friendly” like mine were, you’ll need to un-bend the end so that the pointy metal piece is straight, and not tucked over.

Take a piece of colorful tissue paper (ours was used tissue paper from previous birthdays – yes, I’m that person), and wrap it around an empty toilet paper roll, gathering the extra. With small scissors, poke a teeny, tiny hole in the center of the paper that’s wrapped around the roll – see photo.

New Year's Eve Confetti Poppers

After poking the hole, very, very gently push the pipe cleaner through it by inserting it in the top of the toilet paper roll and pushing it through the hole and pulling it all the way down. If you do this roughly, you’ll rip the paper. The loop in your pipe cleaner should be resting on the tissue paper covering the bottom of the toilet paper roll.

Pour a handful of confetti into the top of the toilet paper roll and gather the tissue paper together to close it. Tie a long ribbon or string around the gathered paper. Use the other end of this string to tie the poppers to something high, or just to hold them over your kids if you don’t have anything to hang them from.

New Year's Eve Confetti Poppers

We hung ours outside, mostly so we wouldn’t get confetti all over the house. Unfortunately, it began to rain just as I tied the last popper on the branch, so we rushed a little more than I expected. But the poppers achieved their goal: smiles and giggles.

New Year's Eve Confetti Poppers