DIY: tissue paper pom poms pt. 1

Wanna know what I love?
Tissue paper.

Wanna know what I love even more than tissue paper?
Tissue paper formed into the shape of pom poms.


Infatuation. Love. Addiction. These words aren't strong enough to describe my feelings toward these colorful little bundles of joy. So when it came to choosing decor for our reception tent, the choice was obvious.

And thanks, once again, to the internet I found tons of information on these little pieces of joy. They're up for sale in several Etsy shops including PomLove and orangekisses for those brides who aren't as DIY inclined or who don't want the stress (trust me, I wish I wasn't so cheap and stubborn sometimes). But since I'm crazy, I've bookmarked about a million tutorials (some of my favorites include this one and the original one from Martha found here) on how to create them myself.

Easy peasy, I thought to myself. A couple hours, maximum. That's a last minute do-it-4-days-before-the-wedding kinda thing, right? Um, no. Wrong. So, very, very wrong. My first attempt at making these bad boys sent me into a fury of frustration.

Because, honestly, there's about 2 things I really need to get married: Mr. FP and tissue paper pom poms. So not having them simply wasn't an option, unfortunately for me and Mr. FP. Especially for Mr. FP, who spent hours encouraging me and trying to get me to believe that with a little practice, I could perfect the art. Poor boy. Anyway, turns out he was right (that's right, I said it) because after a lot, a lot, a lot of practice, my attempts are slowly improving, as you can see from the photos of my trial runs which are now hanging in our bedroom (ignore the lopsided one in the last photo, it needs to be fluffed).





I don't know if it's just me, but this project does not seem like it's for the faint of heart. Once I realized I wanted a variety of sizes (personally, I find the ones from Martha are too big for our purposes) it was even more challenging because I had to figure out the ratio of tissue paper height and width in order to maintain the proper shape (trust me on this one, I had some funny looking shapes when I tried to change the dimensions). Fortunately, Mr. FP is a math genius and he made me a math formula so I can fill in whatever height I want to get the proper width to maintain the shape. That's right, my man makes me wedding-related math formulas. It's romantic, okay?!

In spite of all the stress, it will be worth it. And although it takes 4-8 sheets of paper per pom (which translates into... um, a lot to decorate a wedding tent) it can be done pretty cheaply if you get the majority of the tissue paper from the dollar store.

The only real dilemma after catching onto the learning curve of this DIY project? Deciding between poms and my other love, paper lanterns. For the life of me, I could not decide. And after months of me bugging Mr. FP with "pom poms or paper lanterns?" I finally realized... um, we can have both. Duh. So now, we're going for a look more like the photo below except for the fact that we're going with color pom poms and keeping the lanterns in white.


So now, the hard part is behind us.

Oh, wait. No it's not.
Now I actually have to make 6 trillion tissue paper pom poms.

Crap.