Tissue Paper Tassel Garland Tutorial

Thursday 28 March 2013

Tissue paper tassel garlands make beautiful wedding and party decorations. Use them as a backdrop for sweet tables and photo booths, hang them on tables or above any area that needs to be highlighted. Use one garland or lots of garlands for added impact.

They are so easy to make and you don't need to have any special tools to create them. 

Here's how I made mine ...
Gather your supplies. You will need tissue paper (cut into 15"x20" sheets), scissors, glue (any glue that works on paper),ruler and string for hanging. Clothespins are an option.
Fold a sheet of 15"x20" tissue in a half so that it is 15"x10". You are going to cut fringes in the tissue a little less than 1/2 inch wide. You don't want to cut all the way to the folded edge so I measure about 1.5" down from the folded edge and mark it with a crease so that my fringes were all the same length. See my photo above.
Once you have cut all of the fringes, open the tissue paper up so that the uncut area is in the middle and you have fringes on either side. See photo above. If your tissue has a "front" and "back" you will want the "back" side facing up.
Starting at the bottom of the uncut middle section of the tissue, begin to roll the tissue paper to create your tassel. Continue to roll the centre section until you reach the top of the tissue paper.
Now you will twist and gently squeeze the solid section that we just rolled together. Your fringes were most likely twisted around as you were rolling in the last step - you can untangle them now so that they look like my photo above. 
You will need to make a loop on your tassel for hanging. I like to add a little bit of glue to hold the loop in place. Use any glue that works with paper and dries quickly ...
twist where you added the glue and hold tight for a minute while the glue dries. I like to use large clothespins to hold my loop in place while it dries so my hands are free and I can continue to work on making more tassels!
Once all of your tassels have been made you can add them to a piece of twine, string or ribbon for hanging. You can make the string as long as you want. I like to place the tassels about 4 inches apart and tie each tassel in place on the string so that they don't move around when I'm hanging them. 

Note: If you are using a bunch of colours, you may want to string them all in place before tying the tassels in place to make sure that you like the colour order and placement. 
Your tassels may need to be smoothed out a bit once you have them in place. If you plan to make a bunch of these to hang at a later date, store them nicely so that they will not be crushed or ripped.

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I will be making these tissue paper tassels with everyone at a special Creative Evening Wedding Workshop at Creative Bag in Mississauga on Thursday April 11th, 2013. This is a special evening for brides and their guests. Everyone will make a couple of diy wedding projects and I will be showing samples of our beautiful personalized wedding products that can be ordered online here. If you are getting married and would be interested in attending this free workshop leave me a comment on this post or send me an email and I will let you know more about the evening details. Please note that although the event is free, space is limited so you have to register to attend. 


Wedding favors using candy bags and free download for thank you tags

Friday 22 March 2013

My last post featured a number or our food safe candy bags. Today I wanted to show you one more candy bag that would be perfect as a wedding favor. 

I filled this candy bag with heart shaped candies in colours to co-ordinate with the pink swirls on the bag. I tied the bag close with a couple of pieces of ribbon and added a thank you tag using white paper twine. If you are making hundreds of favors for a wedding (or party) and doing it yourself ... this is a perfect diy project.

Want to use my thank you tags for your special day?  You can download my art below but just remember that it is for your personal use only (no commerical use). 





Free downloads for bag toppers to use on our clear candy bags

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Our budget and premium candy bags make wonderful favor bags for parties and weddings. They feature a fold over pinch bottom with expandable side gussets to form the shape of a stand up bag. These candy bags are available in a number of different sizes in both clear and printed styles and they are all food safe.
I designed a few free downloads of bag headers that can be used with our 4" wide bags. To show you how to use the bag headers, I created a number of different favors using a variety of our candy bags. To use the bag headers: fold the header in half and staple the header to the top of the bag to close.
Just in time for Easter or a spring party!  
(front left) Keep it simple - fill a clear bag with colourful candy eggs, add my striped bag topper and you are done. If your bag contents do not completely fill the bag you can fold over or cut the top of the bag. You will notice that the back of these bag toppers have a blank space so that you can add a personalized message if you wish.


The bag headers can also be cut down and used as gift tags. Here I cut the striped bag header in half, punched a hole and used twine to attach it to a clear loot bag containing a mason jar drinking glass filled with candy eggs and topped off with a small toy. Mason jars, daisy lids and paper straws are available in all of our stores. Organic cotton ribbon was used to close the top of the bag. I could easily stamp party guest's names onto the cotton ribbon if I wanted these to do double duty as place cards.



Here's another favor idea using a clear candy bag and the dot bag header. This time I filled the candy bag with a small jar of chocolate dip and a granny smith apple. Our 4oz quilted crystal jars with lid fit perfectly into the 4" wide candy bags ... fill these jars with homemade sauces, jams or body scrubs for unique party favors. 


My kraft birthday bag headers work perfectly on the printed candy bags. We have a variety of different prints available and our most popular designs for spring can be seen online.
These clear candy bags do not have to be used for just candies or food products. Here you can see that I packaged a number of craft materials in this bag. These bags and headers would be great for packaging customer orders if you have a small business doing home parties. There is space on the "thank you" side of the header to personalize the header with a handwritten note. 
I hope that you will check out our clear candy bags the next time you are looking for interesting packaging supplies.


Pretty Packing Inspiration Using Tissue Paper Flower Pom Poms

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Take tissue paper to the next level by decorating your shopping bags with tissue paper flower pom poms. 

I've shown you how to make tissue paper flower pom poms that can be hung from the ceiling for a party or wedding here and these small tissue paper pom poms are just as easy to make. I just added a couple of extra steps so that you can insert or attach them to the bags. 

You can use the tissue paper flower pom pom kits that we sell to create these and as you will see, you can add some patterned tissue paper to the kits to add a little pop!

The first tissue paper pom pom that I'm going to show you how to make has a spiky floral shape. I made this one so that it that can be tucked into a bag. 
Start with 6 sheets of tissue paper that are 20" by 15". 
Accordion fold the tissue paper so that each fold is about 1" wide.
Now fold the tissue in half as shown above and cut the tissue so that you have two stacks of folded tissue. We will be able to make two of these so put one half aside to finish later.
To create the spiky shape you will need to cut one end of the folded tissue paper into a point as shown (above left). 
You can see how the pointed ends will look as you fan out the tissue a little. 
I use a wood stick or skewer to keep the tissue paper flower pom pom from falling out of the bag. Insert the wood stick into the middle of the folded  tissue paper making sure that the wood stick is far enough into the bottom of the tissue paper that you can add a twist tie to hold everything in place (above right).
Cover up the twist tie and add a decorative element to the pom pom by wrapping a long piece of ribbon over the twist tie - finish with a knot to keep in place.
Now you are ready to open the tissue paper layers just as we would have done with the tissue paper flower tutorial that I showed you here. Be careful as you open each layer that you don't go too fast and tear the tissue. Fluff the pom pom so that it it full.
You can insert the pom pom into a paper bag with the wood stick hidden inside and use the ribbon tied to the bag handle to keep everything in place as shown (above right). 
I used a long piece of ribbon on my pom pom so that I could tie a pretty bow on the bag handle. I gave you the free download for the thank you tags in this post in case you missed it! I love using the May Arts paper twine on my hang tags because they are so easy to use and are available in so many colour options. 

If you are looking for a fun variation to my tissue paper pom poms try adding a few pieces of patterned tissue paper. That's what I did to create the tissue paper flower pom pom on the right (above). I used three sheets of polka dot tissue paper and three sheets of white tissue paper - all tissue paper was 20" x 15". To make the tissue paper flower pom pom follow my basic instructions here but when you open the tissue paper layers open the patterned tissue first so that it is in the centre of the flower. You want one side of the pom pom to be flat so open all layers of the tissue in the same direction. 
The picture on the left (above) shows you what the finished polka dot pom pom will look like. You will want to hide the twist tie that was used to create your pom pom with a long piece of ribbon. This ribbon is more for decoration so make it long enough so that it will hang below the pom pom. I used the twist tie on the pom pom to attach the pom pom to the bag handle as you can see in the photo above (right). 

The nice thing about these tissue paper flower pom poms is that they can be reused if you store them so that they do not get crushed. 



Do you like adding floral details to your packaging? 
Do you like to save money? 

Then you have to check out the sale prices on our resin flowers! 

We are clearing them out and
they will not last long at $.10 a package. 

They are packaged in units of four or six resin flowers depending on the size of the flower ... so they are pennies a piece! The large rose flower in the picture above is my favourite. 

These resin flowers are beautiful for wedding favors, jewellery making, card making and home decor projects. I purchased a bunch of them to save for party favors ... I don't have a party planned right now but with two teenage girls I know that at some point there will be a party that I can put them to use!!! 

We are selling out of some colours and sizes already - your best option is to visit one of the stores ...quickly!





Custom Bags for Roula Thalassinos Designs

Friday 1 March 2013

Custom bags for Roula Thalassinos Designs 


In my last post I showed you a line of beautiful bags and boxes that we carry in our stores and online. Today I wanted to share with you what one of our customers did to customize two of those bags for her interior design business. These bags for Roula Thalassinos Designs are absolutely stunning.


Roula Thalassinos Designs' business cards and marketing materials are sophisticated and elegant ... and so are these bags. 



Here's another look at Roula Thalassinos Designs' bags.

I added black and black and white striped tissue paper pompoms to decorate the bags. The black and white striped tissue paper co-ordinates with the black and white stripes on the reverse of Roula's business card. I love the mixture of the graceful and regal logo with the wild stripes. You can tell that this designer knows how to think outside the box and break away from the norm! 

Looking for more custom products for your business? We can help you out. 
Check our website for more products or contact us by email or phone.