Spring is going bonkers around here and it's only mid-March. The magnolia trees are blooming already! Soon the wisteria and the peach tree and the dogwood will make their entrances. And then, the showstopper, my next-door neighbor's gigantic, ancient cherry tree will explode. Every year I get so much pleasure out of their tree that I started thinking about how to create my own. Short of planting one and waiting a few decades, that is.
What I love about cherry blossoms are their heft. They are so delicate but also so full and lush. I've seen lots of other paper renditions of cherry tree branches but I wanted the blossoms to have more oomph then you usually get with cut-out paper. That's when I got the idea to use honeycomb tissue paper.
I have a very early memory of someone, an aunt or another relative, opening up a honeycomb tissue paper wedding bell decoration, giving it to me, and letting me open and close it over and over. I remember being completely fascinated with this flat, weirdly shaped thing that opened up into an amazing 3-D shape. I have never really lost this fascination and I am always utterly charmed by even the silliest use of this material. Honeycomb tissue has been popping up (as always, pun intended) on craft and design blogs a lot these days and I have been excited to see what people are doing with it. Recently I ordered some sheets of it to play with. (Yes, you can get honeycomb paper in large sheets. I may have done a happy-dance when I learned this fact. These sheets weren't that easy to find locally but after a quick search online I found a party-supplier that carried them.)
The results were fabulous. I am so happy with my early cherry blossoms. They are delicate and showy at the same time, with the structural heft I was looking for. And they won't last forever either, since it's just paper, tape, and glue. So I get to put the branches on my dining room table and still get wistful about the ephemeral nature of beauty. Just like the real thing!
I put together a tutorial over on Roses are Blue for anyone who would like to make their own. You don't need to get big sheets of honeycomb tissue for this either. You could totally re-purpose a dollar-store decoration since the flowers are no bigger than 1-3 inches in diameter. My kids absolutely loved cutting their own shapes and playing with the scraps so even if you don't get all crazy like I did, playing with the stuff is a totally fun activity for a rainy spring afternoon.
