Tissue paper wrapping tutorial

I’ve been so busy with orders that I have yet again neglected my blog posts!  I realise that I still haven’t posted the photos of the foam-free pair of matching urns and promise I will post those sometime this week.

In the meantime, I had a request on my Instagram account to show how I wrap my bouquet’s in tissue paper.  I often design a ‘flat-backed’, presentation style bouquet and the style suits a wrapping that is lower at the front to show off the blooms but still gives good support and protection to the flowers at the back.

This is where my ‘V-necked’ wrapping comes in! It’s very easy to do and can be replicated with your own bouquet’s.

Here’s what you need –

• 4 sheets of waxed tissue paper in your choice of colour.  I use 2 sheets each of a nicely coordinated or contrasting colour, but you could use all the same colour if you like.
• rafia, ribbon or string

If you’re using contrasting/coordinating colours, divide them into 2 piles of 2 sheets – 1 pile with the contrasting colour on top, and one with the contrasting colour underneath.

Fold your first pile of 2 sheets in half along the diagonal so that you have a long straight edge at the bottom and 2 pointed ‘flags’ heading away from you.  At this point I always slightly offset the 2 sheets.  Just a couple of centimetres shows the layers of colour and I think looks more decorative.  Do the same with your second pile of sheets.

Take your first pile of sheets and fold one side of the long end so that the point is around the centre of the two pointed ‘flags’ that are still facing away from you.

Do the same on the other side of the long edge.  Fold it in to meet the other fold almost in the middle.  The tighter the points are together, the narrower your finished bouquet will be – so you might need to play around with how far in you take your folds if you have a very large handtied bouquet.  You get used to looking at the bouquet and gauging how close together your points need to be.

Now do the same with the other pile of 2 sheets so that you have two sets of shapes like this.

Sit your shapes one on top of the other with the folds facing upwards and place your handtied bouquet carefully in the centre.  I leave my stem ends uncovered as I keep them in water until I’m ready to deliver them.

I’m right-handed, so I always fold in the right hand side of the top grouping of tissue paper first, followed by the left hand side.  Give the paper a squeeze to nip it in place.  When I first did this, I obsessed about not creasing the paper too much as I thought it looked messy.  Now, I realise the more careful I am with it, the messier it looks, so I really do just squeeze the paper together in one quick movement!

Then take the second grouping of tissue paper and fold it in the same way – right hand first followed by left hand second (I guess this would be easier reversed if you’re left handed?).  As you’re folding in, just drop the paper slightly lower than the one you’ve already folded so that it shows through to the first layers in a nice decorative pattern.

Tie off the bouquet using your choice of tie.  I often just use jute string, but also sometimes use natural undyed rafia or a wired hessian bow depending on the occasion.

Here’s some photos of the finished wrapped bouquets.  Hope you find the tutorial useful.