A way to line the aisle

Once we decided on the venue and the outdoor ceremony, I started to think about cute ways to line the aisle. We're trying to cut down on the flower budget, so that cuts down a many of the aisle options. While doing my normal "lurking" on the Knot boards I saw some pictures of tissue paper pomanders that looked interesting, but thought to myself "that looks a little hard". Thankfully I came across the wedding planning bio of FutureMrsDudley55 on the DIY boards of the Knot, and she gave awesome step by step picture instructions for tissue paper pomanders. Here is the picture detail of my first attempt.

Materials needed:

-Styrofoam ball (I used a 5" ball, with a 40% off coupon at Michael's)

-Ribbon (left over from other DIY projects)

-Tissue paper (for the trial run I just used tissue paper found at the front of Michael's)

-24 gauge floral wire

-Scissors

-Hot glue and glue gun

1) First off I punched a hole through the styrofoam ball to insert the ribbon (similar to what I did with the silk flower pomander for our flower girl). I knotted the ribbon at the bottom, which would later be covered up with flowers.

2) I cut the tissue paper into little 4" x 3.75" sections, and used stacks of 6 sheets for each flower

3) Next up I folded the 6 sheets in an accordion style, then folded in half. Once folded in half, I rounded the edges to make it more flower like.

4) After that, I cut some of the floral wire (they suggest wire cutters, but my scissors did the trick) and twisted it around the middle part of the tissue paper to make the stem.

5) From here I started to pull apart each of the layers and fan them out to look like a flower.

 

6) I found it easier to make a bunch of flowers, and then stick them in the styrofoam instead of one flower at a time.

7) Here's the beginning of the filling the styrofoam ball. I would punch a little hole with the end of a paintbrush and then add some hot glue, just for added measure. I would stick the "stem" into the hot glue hole and push down to secure.

8) And finally here's the completed project! I really like it and think that it will add some color to the white chairs the guest will be sitting in. Even though I finished this mostly in one night (I got too tired to finish that last little bit, so I did that during lunch today), I'm glad that I have enough time to spread these bad boys out!

We will alternate between blue tissue paper/green ribbon & green tissue paper/blue ribbon.



Are there any other brides out there making tissue paper pomanders?  How will you line your aisle?