Springtime a Little Early -- Tissue Paper Cherry Blossoms

I actually did this project about a week before Valentine's Day so it would be part of the decor for the day, as well as carry over to the spring time decor.

I have been longing for spring more this year than any previous year. Even though the winter has been fairly mild in my area I (and my kids!) have hated being cooped up inside with the weather too cold to play outside. So any hint of spring (even if artificial like this) I've fallen in love with.

I found the idea (via Craft Gossip) for tissue paper cherry blossoms glued to sticks and placed in a vase. I made up the arrangement of sticks in the vase and made the tiny snowflake garland for it in January.  So when the time came I removed the garland and prepared the tissue paper flowers.  The original idea had dark pink in the center with lighter pink on the outside.  I really loved the way that looked, but I didn't have any dark pink and was determined to use what I had on hand, so I just skipped that part.

I started by making templates for two different sizes of blossoms (2" and 1.25").  I just drew squares that size then freehanded the flower shape inside.  Not perfect, but works just fine! 

I traced the shapes lots of times on some tissue paper and cut them out.

Then next three easy steps were repeated with every single blossom.

Smoosh

Twist

Fluff

After gluing the blossoms on the sticks I felt like it needed a little bit of green. So I just free hand cut out some leaves and glued them on near the larger blossoms.

And here's the end result!

What projects are you doing to welcome spring?